Homesteading

September 22, 2017

Importing CSV Text Into COBOL II

I'm importing a Comma Separated Value (CSV) text file into a COBOL II program. I want to compare a numeric field from the file to a number. But the input text field can be different for each record. How do I code in COBOL to accommodate the different number sizes in the text file?

Walter Murray, who worked inside HP's Language Labs where COBOL II was developed before moving out into the user community, noted that Suprtool was likely the best solution to the problem. But after someone suggested that COBOL's UNSTRING statement could be useful, he had his doubts.

Along with suggesting that "importing the file into an Excel spreadsheet, and saving it in a more civilized format," Murray had these notes.

The UNSTRING statement will be problematic, because one of your fields may have one (or more?) commas in it, and you may have an empty field not surrounded by quotation marks. You might have to roll your own code to break the record into fields. If you are comfortable with reference modification in COBOL, your code will be a lot cleaner.

Once you do isolate the check amount in a data item by itself, you should be able to use FUNCTION NUMVAL-C to convert it. Yes, NUMVAL and NUMVAL-C are supported by COBOL II/iX, as long as you turn on the POST85 option.

Olav Kappert offered a long but consistent process.

First thing to do is to not use CVS; use tab-delimited. No problem with UNSTRING. Just use the length field and determine if the length = 0.

Do an UNSTRING of the fields delimited by the tab. Then strip out the quotes. Determine the length of each field and right-justify each field and zero-fill them with a leading zero. Then move the field to a numeric field.

You now have your values. Do this for each field from the unstring. You can create a loop and keep finding the ",". By the way, determine the record length and set the last byte+1 to "~" so that the unstring can determine the end of record. Long process, but consistent in method.

In addition to generating a CSV file with leading zeroes, Alan Yeo suggested using the X field.

Move the CSV value to a full size X field, then strip trailing spaces, and then move the result to an X redefines of your numeric. Please note, as your numeric is V99, you might also want to strip all "." and "," before the compare.

September 20, 2017

Hardware broker posts reducing numbers

Out on the 3000-L mailing list, a hardware broker posts a message every month to report on pricing for HP's 3000 hardware. For many 3000 owners, HP hardware is going to take them to the retirement date of the MPE/iX applications. Hewlett-Packard built plenty of the boxes, ending in 2003. That's 14 years ago next month, so that's the youngest a 3000 built by HP can be. They're only getting older.

The pricing lineup from the hardware broker has listed N-Class systems in prior months. None are on the latest inventory. One notable addition is A-Class HP 3000s. They're for sale at the broker for $1,200. It's a one-processor model, but at least it's an upper-tier single-CPU A-Class. The broker's got discs and other needed peripheral goods, too.

One of the other items on the inventory list sheds light on how the world of HP hardware has changed. Just below that $1,200 A-Class server is a 2GB memory module, selling for $125. That's memory for a Series 997 system, a 3000 that was last built late in the 1990s. That 997 list price was in the six figures when first introduced, the top of the first 9x7 PA-RISC line in 1998. The memory module is available, and that's something of a miracle. HP's hardware still lasts a long time.

That it's priced as low as it is today, from the broker: encouraging for the 3000 site that wants to preserve HP's hardware to drive their MPE/iX apps. Customers believe they'll be able to get HP hardware for MPE/iX as long as they want. They might be right, depending on how long that date is into the future. Memory boards still for sale nearly 20 years after system introduction seem to prove that.

Stromasys made its annual trip to VMworld to show off its solution for two of these solutions. Charon for PA-RISC has been saving MPE/iX applications from hardware obsolescence since 2012. The company's VMware demonstration covered the solution that steps in for the SPARC end of life. As in its demos for the 3000's chipset emulation, the SPARC solution at VMware ran on a laptop.

The company's product manager Dave Clements was interviewed at the show about the overall capabilities of the product line. Stromasys started its lineup emulating DEC processors, moved to HP's PA-RISC, then added Sun's SPARC not long afterward. Alpha chips are also emulated using Charon.

System vendors who relied on these specialized chips have become rare. It's true: Apple's newest iPhone 8 coming out on Friday uses an A11 processor, built by the phone's vendor. In the enterprise computing arena, only IBM sticks to a proprietary chip. The Series i continues to use the POWER chipset. No one can be certain for how long. Last spring, IBM rolled out a roadmap that would take POWER beyond the year 2020. IBM is the last vendor to commit to its chipset for that period of time. like HP Enterprise, uses other chips. Any industry-standard chip could only power the Series i apps through some kind of emulation.

HP and Intel once had sweeping plans for Itanium. For a time in the 1990s, the chip was supposed to take over for x86 architecture. Then technical realities set in, followed by market rules. Apps that used the x86 software was too different from programs designed for PA-RISC. HP and a handful of other system vendors could not sell enough to make those dreams of market domination a reality. Finally, Microsoft dropped Itanium support five years ago.

When dreams fail, there's emulation here in 2017. The x86 foundation has been with the industry since the 1980s. It powers solutions like Charon, long after the SPARCs, Itaniums and PA-RISCs have left the field.

There's nothing announced yet for Itanium emulation. But there's little doubt which company would be first in line to build it.

September 15, 2017

Friday Fine-tune: Disk and memory checks

The utility cstm has the ability to show the configuration of your current memory installation: the makeup of 3000 memory in terms of boards used. What command delivers this information? First, enter the MAP command to see a map of the hardware on your system. Each item on the resulting list has a line number. Note the line number for “memory” and use it in the “select device” command, then enter the “info” command. For example, if the memory is device 64:

cstm>select device 64 cstm>info

If you enter the map command now, you will see the status of the memory will be “Information starting” or “information running”. When the status changes to “Information Successful,” you can display the result with the “il” (information log) command. Note: You can avoid the necessity of repeatedly looking at MAP to determine whether the info function has completed by entering “wait” at the prompt following the “info” command. You will not receive another prompt until the info process has completed. Another answer without using cstm is to run SYSINFO.PRVXL.TELESUP and at the prompt type MEMMAP. You should avoid this solution if using Mirror/iX, since it will break the mirror.]

What MPE command shows me much total hard disk space I have available to me, and how much of that is being used? Also is it possible to break that up per account? For instance, can it tell me how much hard drive space I would gain by purging a particular account? Use :DISCFREE C for checking disc space used and available by drive and in total. :REPORT z.@ will let you know how much your accounts are using. You may want to run :FSCHECK and do a SYNCACCOUNTING first.

September 08, 2017

Fine-tune Friday: Moving systems quickly

Here in the 14th year after HP stopped building 3000s, customers continue to use them. They use them up, too, and when that happens it's time to move a system from one machine to another. Here's some timeless advice from a net.digest column of the NewsWire on how to move quickly.

How do you move a large system from one machine to a completely new system, including disk drives, in the quickest way possible and minimizing downtime? In this particular case, it is a 7x24 shop and its online backup to a DLT4000 takes 16 hours.

Stan Sieler came up with an interesting approach to this particular problem, an approach that can be extended to solve a variety of problems in large 7x24 shops.

• Buy a Seagate external disk drive.

• Configure the Seagate on both the old system and the new system.

• Connect the Seagate on the old system.

• volutil/newset the Seagate to be a new volume set, “XFER” (REMEMBER: Volume set names can and should be short names!)

• Do one (or more) STORE-to-disks using compression with the target disk being the new Seagate drive.

• When the entire system is backed up onto the XFER disk, VSCLOSE it and unplug it (Caution: The safest approach is to power off your system first.)

• Attach the new disk to the new system (see caution above) and reboot.

• Set up the XFER group on the new system.

:newgroup xfer.sys

:altgroup xfer.sys; homevs=XFER

• restore the data

:file xferA; dev=99 (or whatever ldev XFER is)

:restore *xferA; /; olddate;create (if necessary)

Obviously, this leaves out interesting things like setting up UDCs, directory structure, etc. The point of this note is to introduce the concept of using a 36Gb disk drive as a transfer media.

Bijo Kappen and Patrick Santucci both pointed out that TurboStore’s store-to-disk module is smart enough to create another “reel” when the 4Gb file limit is reached. From the TurboStore/iX documentation:

If STORE fills up the first disk file specified for the backup, it creates as many additional disk files as needed, or uses existing disk files. They will be built with the same default file characteristics as the first disk file. The naming convention used for additional files is to append the reel number to the end of the first disk filename. The resulting name will be an HFS-syntax name. For example, if STORE needed three disk files to store all files, they would be named:

/SYS/MYBACKUP/STORDISC

/SYS/MYBACKUP/STORDISC.2

/SYS/MYBACKUP/STORDISC.3

John Lee reported doing the very thing Stan suggested:

“This does work. We do it all the time here when moving information between systems.

“Another variation we’ve found useful is using large, inexpensive, disks for archive purposes. Instead of purchasing often expensive archival devices such as CD or optical jukeboxes, just throw the information on some cheap hard disks inside a cheap enclosure and hang it off your system. Users then have access to all this information online. It might not be right for everybody, but in many cases it is."

September 01, 2017

Steps for a Final Shutdown

We're hearing a story about pulling the next-to-last application off an HP 3000 that's run a port facility. At some point, every HP 3000 has to be guided into dock for the last time. These are business critical systems with sensitive data—which requires a rigorous shutdown for sending a 3000 into a salvage yard.

While this is a sad time for the IT expert who's built a career on MPE expertise, doing a shutdown by the numbers is in keeping with the rest of the professional skill-set you can expect from a 3000 manager. I am reminded of the line from Citizen Kane. "Then, as it must for every man, death came to Charles Foster Kane." Nothing escapes death, but a proper burial seems in order for such a legendary system.

Chris Bartram, whose 3k Associates website offers a fine list of public domain MPE/iX software, has chronicled all the details of turning off an HP 3000. "I have performed last rites for a 9x8 server at a customer site," he says, "and have been through the exercise a couple times before."

There are 10 steps that Bartram does before switching off the 3000's power button for the last time.

Bartram reported that he first purged all accounts except sys, hpspool, and 3000devs (and had to log off all jobs, shut down the network, and disable system UDCs to do that). Then:

2) Reset/blanked all system passwords (groups, users, accounts)

3) Purged all groups from SYS account that I could (aside from in-use groups) as well as all users except MANAGER.SYS,OPERATOR.SYS, MANAGER.HPSPOOL.

4) Went through PUB.SYS listf (file by file) looking for anything that might be a job stream or contain user data (or anything not critical to keeping the system up) and PURGEd it

5) Went into VOLUTIL and condensed my discs

6) Created a group called JUNK.SYS (you would need to do this on each volset; this box only had the system vol set)

7) Wrote and ran a short script that copied NL.PUB.SYS (the largest file remaining on the system) into JUNK.SYS in a loop using filenames A####### and X####### until all disc space was used up

8) Typed the command PURGEGROUP JUNK.SYS

9) Went into NMMGR and changed IP addresses on the box to something bland/different; including the default gateway (also deleted any entries in the NS directory if there are any)

August 28, 2017

VMware ties virtualization to Amazon's tail

Stromasys is a regular presence at the annual VMware conference. This year's event kicked off yesterday with an announcement that ties VMware to Amazon's Web Services. Businesses that want to run some VMware workloads on AWS can do so at Amazon's Oregon cloud datacenters.

VMware is also a regular in the Charon configurations for HP 3000 virtualization. Cloud-based offerings around Charon have been in the Stromasys lineup for several years. The opportunity to be the first 3000 site to operate from the cloud is still out there, but Stromasys is ready.

Charon's HPA product manager Doug Smith says VMware is by no means essential to eliminating a physical 3000. A lot of companies have VMware installed, though, and when they're spent that kind of money they're often interested in how to leverage their datacenter resource. Creating a virtualized Linux server to cradle the virtualization of PA-RISC demands a lot. Some companies have VMware on very powerful servers, so that can help.

Most of the Charon customers are on physical platforms. If VMware is available it can be used unless there's a customer requirement for direct access to a physical device like a tape drive.

Cloud promised a lot for a long time, but it has had costs to calculate, too. This is where the AWS partnership is likely to make a difference. Stromasys product manager Dave Clements said at the start of 2016, "A pretty good-sized virtualized server in the cloud costs about $1,000 a month. We don't discourage it, though."

VMware tried to launch its own cloud services and failed, so now their Amazon ally "gives us a strategic and long-term partnership." It's called VMware Cloud for AWS. The VMware show also included an introduction of a new Kingston SSD device, the NVMe SSD, to eliminate data bottlenecks. SSD is one of the hidden advantages of taking a 3000 host into virtualized Charon territory.

August 21, 2017

The Next Totality: Will it be our last?

A wide swath of North America sparkled with zeal for the sun today. The total eclipse cut across the US from left to right coasts, scattering visions many viewers never knew before in person. We had a partial here in Austin and built a binocular viewer. On TV a stadium full of astronomy enthusiasts saw the clouds dash all but 11 seconds of totality hopes in Carbondale, Ill. Not far to the west, the Stonehenge knockoff Carhenge had clear skies and a stunning swing of darkness for about two minutes.

The talk today began to turn to whether this would be the last total eclipse in our North American lifetimes. The answer is easy enough for things younger than 70: this won't be the last, because less than seven years from now a top-to-bottom totality will swing through North America. Austin is in the path of 100 percent this time. We have to decide if we'll be renting out the NewsWire offices for viewing parties in 2024.

The number of companies who'll rely on the 3000 may be zero in less than six years, but I wouldn't bet on it. Series 70 machines were running in the Dallas area more than 15 years after they were taken off HP's 3000 lineup. The odds of zero MPE/iX apps running in less than six years are probably nil. Virtualized PA-RISC systems from Stromasys will be cradling what we call 3000 apps in 2024.

Our community of experts and customers might take up their circa-2017 eyewear once again when I'm turning 67. If back in 1979 — when the last total eclipse sailed through a bit of the US — someone figured nobody would need to be wearing glasses to watch a total eclipse in 2017, they'd be wrong about that. Old tech has a way of hanging on once it's proved itself. The last total eclipse I'm likely to see is in 2045. I'll only be 88, and MPE will be just a tender 63 years old. Anything first created in 1954 and still in use is 63 years old today. That would be nuclear submarines and M&Ms. Think the latter (alluring, durable) while considering MPE's lifespan. There's also that song about the future, brightness, and shades. As we saw today, stranger things have already happened.

August 18, 2017

Fine-tune Friday: SCSI codes, and clean-ups for UDCs and 3000 power supplies

I need to clean up COMMAND.PUB.SYS on my 3000. There's a problem with BULDACCT. Is there a utility to help manage the UDC catalog?

Stan Sieler replies:

One option is "PURGE," which ships on all MPE systems :) Of course, that means you have to rebuild the UDC catalog. We recently encountered a site where, somehow, an HFS filename had gotten into COMMAND.PUB.SYS. You can't delete UDC entries with HFS filenames, nor can you add them. I had to edit the file with Debug to change the name into something that could be deleted.

Keven Miller adds:

I believe you want the utility UDCSORT from the CSL, the UDC sorting and reorganization program.

There are so many SCSI types. It's got to be the most confusing four letter acronym. Is there a guide?

Ultra160: same as LVD, but data signals double-clocked, i.e. transfers on both clock transitions like DDR DRAM. LVD and Ultra160 can co-exist on the same bus with SE devices, but will operate in SE mode. HVD doesn’t co-exist with anything else.

Upon arrival this morning my console had locked up. I re-started the unit, but the SCSI drives do not seem to be powering up. The green lights flash for a second after the power is applied, but that is it. The cooling fan does not turn either. The fan that is built into the supply was making noise last week. I can’t believe the amount of dust inside.

Tom Emerson responded:

This sounds very familiar. I’d say the power supply on the drive cabinet is either going or gone [does the fan ‘not spin’ due to being gunked up with dust and grease, or just ‘no power’?] I’m thinking that the power supply is detecting a problem and shutting down moments after powering up [hence why you see a ‘momentary flicker’].

Denys Beauchemin added:

The dust inside the power supply probably contributed to its early demise. It is a good idea to get a couple of cans of compressed air and clean out the fans and power supplies every once in a while. The electrical current is a magnet for dust bunnies and other such putrid creatures.

Tom Emerson reminisced:

Years ago at the first shop where I worked we had a Series III and a Series 48. Roughly every 3-6 months an HP technician would stop by our office to perform Preventative Maintenance. Amazingly, we had very few hardware problems with those old beasts. Once we didn't have a tech coming out to do PMs anymore, we had hardware related failures, including a choked-up power supply fan on a disk cabinet.

Finally, Wayne Boyer said"

Any modular power supply like these is relatively easy to service. It is good advice to stock up on spares for older equipment. Just because it’s available somewhere and not too expensive doesn’t mean that you can afford to be down while fussing around with getting a spare shipped in.

The compressed air cans work—but to really do a good job on blowing out computer equipment, you need to use an air compressor and strip the covers off of the equipment. We run our air compressor at 100 PSI. Note that you want to do the blasting outside! Otherwise you will get the dust all over where ever you are working. This is especially important with printers as you get paper dust, excess toner and so forth building up inside the equipment. I try and give our equipment a blow-out once a year or so. Good to do that whenever a system is powered down for some other reason.

August 16, 2017

How Free Lunch Can Cost You The Future

Staying put with 3000 homesteading has been a sure road to spending less. That's in the short term, or maybe for intermediate planning. A longer-term strategy for MPE/iX application lifespans, especially the apps serving ERP and manufacturing, includes a migration and less free lunch. Those times are ending in some places.

"Life was really easy for the last 25 years, with no upgrades and no new releases," Terry Floyd of TSG says of the second era of ERP on the 3000s. MANMAN customers looking into that past could track to 1992, and then the versions of MANMAN owned by Computer Associates. MPE/iX was in the 5.0 era, so there have been many revisions of the 3000's OS since then. The hardware was stable, while it was not so aged. It's not unheard of to find a company that hasn't upgraded their 3000 iron since the 1990s. Yes, Series 928 systems work today in production.

"There is just nothing cheaper than running a stable ERP on a stable platform like MPE," Floyd adds. He also notes that migrating a MANMAN site out of the 3000 Free Lunch Cafe is made possible by the latest Social ERP app suite. "If Kenandy was less flexible," he says, "it would be a lot harder in some instances."

Free Lunch, as described above with devotion to existing, well-customized apps, is quite the lure. It can cost a company its future, making the years to come more turbulent with change and creating a gap when a free lunch won't satisfy IT needs. Pulling existing apps into a virtual host with Stromasys Charon can pay for part of the lunch and provide one step into the future.

Migration to a subscription model of application, instead of migrating PA-RISC hardware to an Intel host, makes a company pay for more of the future. The payments are measured, though. If the payoff is in enhancements, the future can brim with value like a golden era of application software.

Kenandy does its ERP magic with its endless flexibility by subscribing a site to the software. Improvements and repairs that extend the value arrive like presents under the tree. The cost is determined in advance and support is wired into the same revenue stream as development. HP separated those streams in its 3000 era. App providers like Computer Associates did the same. Floyd points back to the ASK Computing ownership of MANMAN as a golden enhancement era. That was 1982-85, he says.

However, a subscription model nails a customer down for years of continuous paying. It's more like a very good lease, and if you read the software contracts closely you'll find most of it was licensed, not sold. The exceptions were the MANMAN sites which owned their source code. The idea of owning source that was built by a vendor who won't enhance it -- because you now own the code -- is a big part of the Free Lunch lure. You don't pay anymore for software.

"Free lunch is closing down," Floyd says. Yes, it was a relief to know owning a server and the code outright dialed back operating costs. But a subcription model "is of value because it forces you to move forward. It has continuous upgrades and enhancements."

August 14, 2017

Increasing Challenges of 3000 DIY Support

Do It Yourself efforts sometimes emerge from ingenuity. Enthusiasts build mashups of products like a beer cooler melded with an old fridge. DIY desktop PC builds were once the rage, but most datacenters' efforts today are Build To Orders. The challenges of DIY support for production-class servers is also starting to become a tall order. The increased efforts are being found in HP's Unix environments, too.

"DIY is increasingly hard to do," says Donna Hofmeister of Allegro, "mostly due to aging hardware. Often, those left in charge of MPE systems have little knowledge of the system. We get called when things are in a real mess. This applies to a lot of HP-UX shops now as well."

The oldest of hardware has its challenges on both sides of the PA-RISC aisle, both HP 3000 and HP 9000s. As an example, last week Larry Simonsen came upon DTC manuals in his cleanup pile. "I have some old manuals I do not find on the Internet using Google," he said. "Where do I upload my scans before I destroy these?" The aged gems cover support for the DTC 16TN Telnet Terminal Server, DTC 16iX Lan Multiplexer and DTC 16MX Communications server. The installation guide is HP part 5961-6412

Destroying old paper is environmentally friendly once the information is captured in some way. The capture gives the community ways to share, too. Keven Miller, a support pro who's stockpiled HP's manuals on the 3000 and MPE/iX, said those DTC manuals are only in his library as versions for HP-UX documentation. Like a good support provider always does in 2017, he got serious about capturing this tech data about the 3000.

"If you happen to choose to scan, send copies my way to include in my collection," Miller said. "Or if that's not going to happen, drop them off or I'll come get them and scan (at some future date) myself."

Parts have driven working HP 3000s into migration scenarios. A depot-based support operation assures a customer they'll never come of short of a crucial component. Pivital's Steve Suraci, whose company specializes in 3000s, pointed out that a weak Service Level Agreement (SLA) has a bigger problem than just not being able to get a replacement HP part.

How many HP 3000 shops are relying on support providers that are incompetent and/or inept? A provider is willing to take this company's money, without even being able to provide reasonable assurance that they had replacement parts in a depot somewhere in the event of failure. There are still reputable support providers out there. Your provider should not be afraid to answer tough questions about their ability to deliver on an SLA.

The easy questions to answer for a new client are "Can you supply me support 24x7?" or "What references will you give me from your customers?" Harder questions are "Where do you get your answers from for MPE questions?" Or even, "Do you have support experts in the 3000 who can be at my site in less than a day?"

But Suraci was posing one of the harder questions" "Here are my hardware devices: do you have spares in stock you're setting aside for my account?" Hardware has started breaking down more often in the 3000 world. Hewlett-Packard got out of the support business for 3000s for lots of business reasons. One consistent reason was that 3000-related spare parts got scarce in HP's supply chain.

Both are, well, difficult to use. (HP-UX also switched from sysdiag to stm.) Both have some modules that require passwords, and some that don't.

The offline diagnostics are on a bootable CD or tape. The lastest offline diagnostics CD (for PA-RISC) that I could find was labelled "2004."

That CD has seven diagnostics/utilities. I tried running all of them on an A-Class system. The "ODE" one is special; it's a program that itself hosts a number of diagnostics/utilities (some of which require passwords).

I'm not saying these diagnostics are "password-protected," because that implies they need protecting. "Password restricted" or "password deprived" might be a more accurate phrase. :)

ISL> tdiag...probably doesn't require a password (can't run on A-Class)

ISL> clkutilno password

ISL> edproc...probably doesn't require a password (can't run on A-Class)

ISL> edbc...probably doesn't require a password (can't run on A-Class)

ISL> xmap...probably doesn't require a password (can't run on A-Class)

ISL> multidiag****** MULTIDIAG ************ Version A.01.12 ******Enter password or a <CR> to exit:

All the rest from here on are ODE utilities/diagnostics. I ran each one, and document whether or not it requires a password. (A few utilities seem to have little or no use because HP hasn't provided a method of saying "Hey, my disk drive isn't an HP drive, and it's over here.")

ODE> wdiag****** WDIAG ************ Version A.01.53 ******Enter password or a <CR> to exit:

(from a friend:)

WDIAG is the PCXW ODE based diagnostic program. It is intended to test the Processor of the various PCXW based systems in the offline environment. The program consists of 150 sections, 1/150, and are organized into the following groups:

August 09, 2017

Parts become hair triggers for some sites

Ordering parts for HP 3000s used to be painless. HP's Partsurfer website showed the way, letting a manager search by serial number, and even showing pictures in a full listing of components. Click to Buy was a column in the webpage.

That's a 3000 option that's gone from the HP Enterprise Partsurfer website, but there are options still available outside of HP. Resellers and support vendors stock parts — the good vendors guarantee them once they assume responsibility for a server or a 3000-specific device. Consider how many parts go into a 3000. These guarantees are being serviced by spare systems.

Parts have become the hair trigger that eliminates 3000s still serving in 2017. "Availability of parts is triggering migrations by now," said Eric Mintz, head of the 3000 operations at Fresche Solutions.

Homesteading to preserve MPE/iX is different and simpler matter. Virtualized systems to run 3000 apps have been serving for close to five years in the marketplace. That's Charon, which will never have a faded Partserver website problem. No hardware lasts forever, but finding a Proliant or Dell replacement part is a trivial matter by comparison. A full spare replacement is one way to backstop a Charon-hosted MPE/iX system, because they run on Intel servers.

"Some customers do want to stay on as long as possible," Mintz said. Application support helps them do this. So do depot-based support services: the ones where needed parts are on a shelf in a warehouse space, waiting.

The longest-lived example of depot part service I've seen came for a Series 70 HP 3000. This server was first sold in 1985. About 22 years later, one of the last was being shut down in 2007.

Ideal has just retired its last 70 about a month ago," Ryan Melander said. "The machine was just de-installed into three pieces and shipped back East, where it will sit for two years—and if needed, be fired back up for archive data. We have only had two power supply incidents in the last year. However, the old HP-IB DDS tape units became very hard to support. We do have a fully functional system in our depot."

One working theory about hardware in the industry is that older generations of computers were built to last longer. Given the capital cost of the units, customers (especially the 3000 owners) expected them to run forever.

A-Class servers were last built in 2003. A 22-year run of service would get the last one retired in 2025. Ah, but you have to factor in the quality of the build. Getting to 2020 might be interesting. A depot support solution would be essential to avoid squeezing that hardware trigger.

August 07, 2017

Support firms vet, curate online 3000 advice

Just a few weeks ago, we reported on the presumed disappearance of the HP 3000 Jazz lore and software. The resource of papers and programs written for the MPE/iX manager turned up at a new address at Fresche Solutions' website. Fresche was once Speedware, a company that licensed use of all the Jazz contents—help first compiled by HP in the 1990s.

Now it looks like HP's ready to flip off the switch for its Community Forum. These have been less-trafficked webpages where advice lived for 3000s and MPE. Donna Hofmeister, a former director of the OpenMPE advocacy group, noted that an HP Enterprise moderator said those forums would be shut down with immediate effect.

Information to all members, that we will retire the Operating Systems - MPE/iX forum and all boards end of business today.

As far as I can tell, all MPE information is no longer accessible! :-( I'm not happy that no public announcement was made <sigh> If you can demonstrate differently, that would be great!

But a brief bout of searching this morning revealed at least some archived questions and answers at the HPE website about the 3000. For example, there's a Community post about advice for using the DAT 24x6e Autoloader with MPE/iX. It's useful to have an HP Passport account login (still free) to be able to read such things. The amount of information has been aging, and nothing seems to be new since 2011. It wasn't always this way; HP used to post articles on MPE/iX administration with procedural examples.

Not to worry. The established 3000 support providers have been curating HP's 3000 information like this for many years. No matter what HP takes down, it lives on elsewhere. "We gathered a lot of the Jazz and other HP 3000 related content years ago to cover our needs," said Steve Suraci of Pivital. "While I don’t think we got everything, I do think we have most of what we might need these days." Up to date web locations for such information should be at your support partner. Best of all, they'll have curated those answers.

Knowing what's useful, correct, and up to date: that's what a guide does. Indie support companies like Pivital do this (Pivital happens to be an all-3000 company). Only a DIY shop -- with no support budget for the 3000 -- has any business skipping support. Production 3000s deserve the backstop of a support guide.

For example: That HP Community forum has lots of user-supplied answers to questions about MPE/iX. Without any direct access to the forum, though, the traffic died four years ago. That means there's nobody left reading the forum to check the accuracy of the free advice.

The 3000-L still has 470 subscribers, and a 3000-L archive that can be searched. That's a fair number of readers to keep solutions on target. However, if your production 3000's support resource is limited to 3000-L, that's probably not enough to keep a mission-critical application online. Taking a journey with a system whose OS has been static since 2009 requires a guide -- or at least an expert curator to filter what advice is working and what is not sound anymore.

John Clogg, still maintaining a 3000 at Cerro Wire, offered a link for HP's latest location of 3000 manuals.

As of this moment, MPE manuals are still available at: http://h20565.www2.hpe.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/psi/manualsResults/?javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.prp_e97ce00a6f76436cc859bfdeb053ce01=wsrp-navigationalState%3DmanLang%253Den&javax.portlet.tpst=e97ce00a6f76436cc859bfdeb053ce01&sp4ts.oid=416035&ac.admitted=1501870675581.125225703.1851288163

August 04, 2017

Friday Fine-Tune: HP 3000 DLT vs. DDS

Backing up enterprise-grade 3000s presents interesting choices. Back in the 1990s when the 3000 being built and sold by HP, DDS at first had only two generations, neither of which were reliable. A DDS tape used to be the common coin for OS updates and software upgrades. The media has advanced beyond a DDS-4 generation to DAT-360, but Digital Linear Tape (DLT) has a higher capacity and more reliability than DDS.

When a DDS tape backup runs slower than DLT, however, something is amiss. DLT is supposed to supply a native transfer rate of 15 MBps in the SureStore line of tape libraries. You can look at an HP PDF datasheet on the Ultrium SureStore devices certified by HP for MPE/iX at this link.

HP 3000 community partners such as Pivital Solutions offer these DLTs, At an estimated cost of about $1,300 or more per device, you'll expect them to beat the DDS-3 transfers of 5 MBps.

When Ray Shahan didn't see the speed he expected after moving to DLT and asked the 3000 newsgroup community what might be wrong. Advice ranged from TurboStore commands, to channels where the drives are installed, to the 3000's bandwidth and CPU power to deliver data to the DLT. Even the lifespan of the DLT tape can be a factor. HP's MPE/iX IO expert Jim Hawkins weighed in among the answers, while users and third-party support providers gave advice on how to get the speed which you pay extra for from DLT.

Dave Gale wrote in an answer that device configuration and CPU are potential problems:

If you are using a DLT it likes to get data in a timely manner. Otherwise it will do the old 'shoe shine'. This means that other devices on the line can affect the bandwidth on the channel and starve the DLT. If you are using something like RoadRunner, then the CPU can be a real factor in this equation (especially single-CPU machines). So, you may not only want to check the statistics portion of the report, but monitor your machine during backup with Glance or SOS.

Gilles Schipper of GSA said that a TurboStore command is essential. "If you're using HP TurboStore, are you using MAXTAPEBUF option on STORE command?" MAXTAPEBUF and INTER can make a major difference, cutting a backup to DLT from 7 hours to under 2 by adding the parms.

HP's Hawkins said channel configurations of backup devices are key to ensuring that DLT tops the DDS speed:

Generally this shouldn’t happen. It might happen if the DLT and disc are on the same channel while the DAT/DDS was on a separate one. Might also happen with large numbers of small files on semi-busy system as some DAT are better at start/stop than DLT. If you are running STORE the STATISTICS option can give a broad indication of throughput for A/B comparison.

August 02, 2017

Long-term value rests in short-life servers

It's a summer afternoon in Virginia when a 3000 expert takes inventory. He's got a declining number of billable hours this month, enough of a problem to reach for resources to liquidate. His pair of big 9x9 systems in offsite storage have been offline for all of this year, and all of last year, too. There's gold in them there chassis, he figures. They've got to be worth something.

Then the expert has a look at last week's 3000-L newsgroup traffic. The messages have dwindled to a couple of dozen even in the good months, but one hardware reseller posts messages monthly. Old 3000s are for sale at an asking price that doesn't exceed $5,000 for even the biggest server. HP only built one N-Class bigger than the 4-way 550 N-Class that tops the list. The 9x9s in the message? About $1,000-$1,200 apiece, even for a 989. Selling servers like that to a broker might net maybe half that to our expert.

Even though the servers are in great shape, stored in temperature-controlled storage units, and sport some nice peripherals, the resale value of the boxes isn't surprising. They're short-life assets, because eventually they'll break down. There's something in them that might be more valuable than $500 per system, though. The MPE/iX licenses for these systems could be worth something, even if the hardware isn't exactly golden.

A historical note or two: The Series 989 models sold for as little as $175,617 when HP launched them 18 years ago. MPE/iX 6.0 was the first OS to power them. Like everything else HP built for MPE/iX, the servers stopped being sold in 2003

How much such licenses would fetch is an unknown this year. A low-cost server in the used market usually has MPE/iX loaded on its disks. A clear chain of ownership, though, might not be a part of that discount price. Who'd care about such a thing? Our expert thinks of the one company more devoted to the everlasting future of MPE/iX than anybody: Stromasys.

Any 3000 customer with enough dedication to using MPE/iX in an emulated environment may very well want good MPE/iX licenses. HP promised to deliver an emulator-only MPE/iX license to the community, but the vendor stopped issuing licenses before Stromasys Charon got into the market. A license for a 3000 is the one element of the MPE/iX environment in shortest supply. For now, nobody has started to list server licenses as a product that can be purchased.

It's going to kill our expert to just scrap all his hardware and software. But it's a buyer's market for HP's iron, since it's going to expire far sooner than later. Selling the licenses would be like trying to find someplace where at least those instances of MPE/iX could live on.

HP's 3000 boxes are stripped for parts every week, and for good reason. Part availability is still driving the ultra-long-term homesteaders into migrations. Stripping a 3000 for its license to be used in Charon has prospects that could last much longer. At a minimum, a license has a 10-year useful lifespan if Charon is involved.

Reseller systems on the market with explicit transfer paperwork aren't rare. The papers aren't automatic, though. Taking in HP's 3000 iron, but skipping the $432 fee to get HP's official transfer, complicates the value of the license. If any such hardware owner hasn't done the transfer, they'll have to deduct that expense from what the license will bring on the market. Anybody who wanted to get a Charon system set up, but doesn't have an eligible system from which to transfer a license, would find value in a license marketplace.

Charon customers I've interviewed so far don't need licenses for MPE/iX. Their old systems were still on hand when they made the jump to virtualized servers. User counts for licenses become important in the 9x9 family. One site that's looking at virtualization has utilities with support fees that will rise, they believe, when they make the jump. If there's a way that a license with a smaller user count could keep that from happening, then the licenses will be worth a lot more than the paper they're printed upon. And the shipping for this virtual 3000 component? So cheap, compared to moving HP's iron.

July 31, 2017

Where 2028 fits in the homestead calendar

Tactical planning for the HP 3000's future is a current practice at shops like MagicAire. The company that manufactures mobile cooling units has a Series 939 that continues to run MANMAN and carefully-crafted applications. Ed Stein there has a need to think about something more pressing than getting his apps and utilities licensed for emulator use. He's thinking strategic.

Stein chooses to think about the end of the 3000's calendar days. He's interested in getting someone to fix the date issue that will arise at midnight on Dec. 31, 2027. The foresight is the first customer readiness we've seen that examines what can be done before that day arrives.

Developers and vendors have been talking about 2028, but not yet in explicit design language. Stein is the first customer who's doing the talking.

I am more concerned right now with the Year 2027 MPE issue. Not that we plan to be on MPE in that year—but if a fix is to be had, that fix needs to be done sooner than later, given the age and availability of the required expertise to develop a fix. There may be no one around in 2026 who knows how to fix it, in the event that in the worst case we are still on an HP 3000.

My company would look at paying for a fix now as insurance.

It's 10 years and five months away, but the end of 2027 is the deadline for regular date handing to stop working. It makes the challenge a Year 2027 issue if you consider Y2K to have been a Year 1999 issue. The most intense work always happens ahead of a deadline. If you're savvy, it's many years before a deadline.

There are likely partners on the horizon for the 3000 community's efforts to leap into 2028 (a Leap Year, by the way, but that calendar event won't be of any help.) Looking out into a world of 10 years from now, virtualization and emulation will still be operating at companies. Stromasys has the most to gain from keeping MPE/iX moving forward into 2028.

There are the customers who will rely on the work, too. Now there's at least one who's putting near-term licensing in its appropriate rank: secondary to making sure there's a platform that can carry on. Keeping the dates working is like keeping the GPS satellites in orbit. We'd say keeping the street signs on the corners, but that's not the way we'll find our way in 2028. In lots of places, we won't need those signs in 2018.

July 26, 2017

Wayback Wed: User groups, past and future

Twelve years ago this week, the Interex user group became fully retired. Most of the community called the shutdown of the 31-year-old HP users group a bankruptcy, since millions of dollars of invoices went unpaid, while hundreds of thousands of dollars in deposits and membership fees vanished. In its own way, though, Interex was stepping aside for user groups better built for IT of the 21st Century. The groups that have taken over during those years are better focused, streamlined, and understand their constituents better.

One of those groups is seeking directors this week. Connect, the latest generation of a group that was called Encompass on the day Interex retired, is searching for nominees to serve in three seats on its board. Members of a user group board have important duties, even while they're working for no pay. They oversee fiscal decisions, like the group on the Interex board was charged with doing at its demise. Directors propose advocacy, like the dozens of volunteers who served on the OpenMPE group in its eight years of existence. A board at its best looks forward toward how its organization should evolve. The ecosystem for IT is always changing.

That International Group for Hewlett-Packard Computer Users became Interex in 1984 and had mixed missions right from its beginnings. Built in an era without Internet or fax machines, Interex had to serve the needs of HP 3000, HP 9000, and even HP 1000 community members. The latter often didn't know they owned a 1000, since it was embedded deep in other devices. When I began covering HP in 1984, the HP 1000 group still was holding its own annual conference, even as it operated under the Interex banner.

Things got more complicated when PCs moved into datacenters and offices for good. By the time Interex locked its doors on Borregas Avenue in Sunnyvale, Calif., the HP 9000 members had overtaken the mission of the 3000, riding that pre-Internet wave of Unix passions. HP had announced its exit scheme for MPE/iX. Windows became the dominant environment for IT computing, a community too diverse for a vendor-centric group to impact.

The last executive director who left his job with the group still intact, Chuck Piercey asked repeatedly in the years before the bankruptcy what a user group built around one vendor might do in a homogenous landscape. Interex was built when the silos of vendors could stand distinct, and managers could run an all-HP shop and remain competitive within their industries.

Encompass was built upon the same model, but the group evolved to maintain a foothold and became Connect. Since 2016 the membership has been free. Interex membership added a free level in the years before the group folded, a facet that made the group's rolls swell but added little to the value proposition for membership.

At the end, HP said in 2004 it had enough of the strident Interex activists who fought for customers. It was a matter of tone, HP said, not so much content that sent HP out to establish its own conference. In just a few years the Technology Forum, which had a heavy HP corporate attendance, became HP Discover. A new breed of conference was born, something not steered by a user group.

In 2005, Encompass reached out to the stranded Interex members as Interex founder Doug Mecham said the group hadn't died off — it simply retired.

Rather than any negative or derogatory term used to describe the situation, perhaps we should just refer to the “change” as “retirement” of Interex, just as we would an old friend. This situation does open up possibilities – opportunities for new lives in different directions, each person taking the spirit and success knowledge elsewhere in the world. Interex will not long be forgotten, for it represented an organization of professionals that made a mark in the computer world, second to none.

The bedrock of Connect, Encompass, saw its president Kristi Browder say the departure of Interex was no barometer of the user group concept.

As a former partner and colleague of Encompass in serving HP technology users, Interex has shared similar goals, passions and dedication to the HP user base. I want you as an Encompass community member to know this is no indication of the downturn in the value of Encompass or user groups in general.

The HP world was left with technical papers in 2005 that were undelivered, because the conference they were written for was cancelled. Later in the year HP mounted the first HP Technology Forum and Expo with significant help from Encompass and the Tandem users group, planning content. HP handled the expo duties as Interex had while running shows.

Browder could be excused for seeing the sunny side of the street where user groups lived. Few groups ever had such a bellwether conference like the Interex show. At the finish of the Interex run, the user group was riding on reserves all year that were banked off the commerce from its show floor booths. When the user group died, it left its shadow of red ink, because mid-summer was no time to feel cheery about the Interex balance sheet.

The 3000 community never duplicated networking which made such conference travel worthwhile. I still miss the face-to-face contact guaranteed each year by going to HP World and Interex before that conference. I was lucky to have 20 years of shows to attend. 3000 veterans, cut adrift from their annual meeting, put together a lunch of around 30 members who had nonrefundable tickets to San Francisco, and later there were reunions in 2007, 2009 and 2011.

July 24, 2017

Catch up tech can save legacy 3000s

About a month ago we celebrated the 12-year anniversary of this blog. We scooped up three of the stories from that summer week of 2005, including notice of Taurus Software's Bridgeware. Quest Software was selling Bridgeware in a partnership with Taurus in 2005. Then we added that Bridgeware product continues to bridge data between 3000s and migration targets like Oracle.

This was catchup news to one HP 3000 manager among our readers. "I wish I had known about Taurus BridgeWare before my A500 crashed," he said. "Now I cannot get the data out of it."

This can be a fate that a site in deep-static mode can't escape. If spending has stopped, but the 3000's data carries on in a now-frozen app, that's an imbalance waiting to become something more serious. Good backup strategies can mitigate that kind of failure. Last week we chronicled the failover capabilities of Nike disk arrays. However, the best failover plan is the one that loses little to nothing because it's all being mirrored all the time.

Manufacturing sites have taken to sharing their data across multiple platforms for many years. The Support Group keeps up with information on the best-preserved tools to move data between manufacturing 3000s and SQL Server databases in real time. Playing catch up with tech is a better choice than wishing you knew about things like Bridgeware. We covered that bridging tech in detail you can find here on this blog. Here's a recap.

Bridgeware replicates IMAGE files in real time, as well as MPE files, Eloquence database and the usual suspects in the relational roster: Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, My SQL, or any ODBC database.

A good share of the Bridgeware work has been supporting customers who want to stay on the server. "We’ve been building a lot of operational data stores lately for customers who want to stay on the 3000," said Cailean Sherman. "These people want to have their production data available real time in a relational environment for reporting and analysis. The data can be ported to open systems once a migration is over, to replicate data between databases and files on open systems."

There have been other ways to capture HP 3000 data for mirroring in real time for a lower price point. Many, however, haven't survived into the current decade. The challenge in the homesteading community is keeping up with what's been acquired or pulled into the stable of a larger company (the fate of Powerhouse comes to mind in the latter category).

The best way a manager can get customized advice about this is to invest in consulting support from a company specializing in HP 3000 issues. We refer our readers to Pivital Solutions for this holistic support. It's a company that grew up in manufacturing application services.

July 19, 2017

Pumped up pro, app teams serve 3000 shops

Three years ago, the company that once called itself Speedware had 120 employees. A couple of years earlier, the provider of 3000 software and professional services renamed itself Fresche Legacy, taking a new tack into the winds of the IBM Series i business. The IBM successor to the AS400, Series i had much in common with the architecture of the 3000. Turnkey solutions, a consistent database offering, a wide array of independent software vendors. There was still 3000 business to be conducted at Fresche, though. In the past three years, Fresche has grown to 355 employees. Three times as many 3000 pros work on MPE support and services as did in 2015.

Fresche rebranded again this year, changing the Legacy part of its name to Solutions. Fresche Legacy calls what it does modernization more often than migration. That's a tactic that aims to win business from customers who don't consider their IT architecture a legacy.

Eric Mintz said the full Application Services division accounts for 69 employees. App services encompasses IBM i as well as HP skillsets, among others. It's known as HP skillsets, rather than 3000, because this is a company supporting HP-UX, too. One of the first migration success stories HP pushed was a Speedware-to-Speedware project, 3000 to 9000. The app services are separate from the Fresche Professional Services division. "They also have a variety of skills, associated to defined projects," Mintz said. "Although applications and professional employees are separate, resources can move between departments, depending on project or service needs."

Mintz said the company is always looking for 3000 experience. "Ninety percent of the project work is done remotely," he added. "That works out great for consultants who don't want to travel much."

Mintz has been with the firm for 17 years, and he adds that the company likes to say its client list is 100 percent referenceable—meaning a prospect might talk to any one of the clients to get a report on how things went. That doesn't go for publications, since that level of candor usually needs to be vetted at the clients' PR and legal level. But we'll have a report on a classic 3000 customer soon, one who has been moving away from HP 3000s since the earliest days of migrations.

One element that's key to modernization is Speedweb, first set in motion more than a decade ago to add browser-style connectivity to apps that sometimes look more like DOS. Speedweb is among the family of software products for 3000s, HP-UX, and Windows systems. Mintz said that since 2004 there have been 119 updates, revisions or fixes to Speedweb, 57 of which were enhancements. "Enhancements are primarily related to the addition of GUI controls," he said, "such as radio buttons, combo boxes, check boxes, textboxes and so on."

Back in 2004 we reported on a Speedweb success at Flint Industries, one of several Speedware customers that implemented Speedweb. The company was using it extensively until Flint was purchased by Aberici in 2013, a change that began to move the application slowly into maintenance mode. Speedweb was a way of modernizing the Speedware V7 app, a service the Fresche continues to provide today. An Aberici app replaced the modernized Speedware, but that's a decade extra that he original HP 3000 code got to do its work.

An old rival to the Speedware 4GL is providing significant business for the services group. Powerhouse migrations flow through the Fresche shops. The hard spot that Powerhouse 3000 users find themselves in, facing a hungry new ownership intent on continuing legacy-era licensing, can be eased by moving off the former Cognos 4GL. It's never been simple task, but a 4GL company that wants to do the work might have a unique perspective on how to succeed at it.

July 17, 2017

Does 3000 migration mean modernization?

"Sooner or later, you'll need to do something," says the HP 3000 services manager at Fresche Legacy. 3000 owners probably know the company better as Speedware, but one thing hasn't changed at the Montreal software and services provider. The number of 3000 experts and consultants continues to grow there. Eric Mintz said the resources bench is three times bigger for MPE/iX apps than it was just a year a half ago. There's heavy lifting going on, even in 2017, to bring 3000 shops into compliance. Parts matter, too.

Mintz also considers this a good question: Do 3000 owners today look for help by searching for migration, or for modernization? A simple search for HP3000 modernization brings up one set of results, while "HP3000 migration" yields different ones. I was happy to see that we hit nearly at the top of "HP 3000 migration" searches. (Only an antique PDF from HP tops us.) It matters where a searcher puts the HP and "3000". Fresche has purchased a Google ad for "hp3000 migrations." Try several searches if you're seeking help via Google.

But what's the difference between a modernization and a migration anyway? It depends on your scope for "more modern."

If your idea is "get away from old HP iron, and onto something more modern, Stromasys can cover that without changes to anything else. Using Charon adds an extra layer of software to make modern hardware drive MPE/iX. Buying HP, from that point onward, will never be a requirement again, though. Some 3000 shops have vowed to keep HP Enterprise off their POs forever.

Modernization also can be performed for any application without making the serious changes migration requires. Access to modern databases like SQL Server and Oracle comes by way of Minisoft's ODBC. Hillary Software's byRequest delivers modern file formats like Excel and PDF to MPE/iX apps. However, if leaving your OS platform for something else is the primary goal, it's better to migrate first, and modernize later. Speedware and others always promoted this lift-and-shift strategy. In that scheme, you lift by migrating, then shift by modernizing.

We've written up lift and shift several times already, even capturing some video from eight years ago. but the years keep rolling by for sites relying on MPE/iX. We heard about one shop today that just finished a migration of a handful of key applications. The first MPE/iX apps at the shop were migrated in 2002. This latest set moved out in 2017. Customers migrate when they need to and sometimes when outside requirement force this migration.

The modernization can happen while apps remain in place. Speedware/Fresche have been doing MPE/iX app support for more than a decade. This service is one of the reasons the company needs a deep 3000 bench. The service also makes Fresche one of the place where a 3000 pro can inquire about working on MPE/iX. There are few of those positions in play here in 2017 — probably fewer than the number of 3000 apps that need to migrated. Modernizing with software is a larger field of prospects.

July 12, 2017

Adminstrator to Architect, Aided by 3000s

LinkedIn reminded me today that Randy Stanfield has moved up in the IT management at Vertiv Corporation. The company in Carrolton, Texas is a Fortune 500 firm with 8,700 employees, $8.3 billion in revenue, a leading provider of packaging, print and paper, publishing, facility solutions and logistics. Stanfield has been there for 20 years, working with HP 3000s and going beyond the MPE/iX engines to broader fields.

Prior to that you can read in his LinkedIn profile other 3000 shop experience. Amfac, Wilson Business Products, places where MPE/iX and its resources made companies much smaller than Veritiv run smooth.

Managing HP 3000s can build a special kind of bedrock for a career. When you read the rest of the company description for Veritiv it sounds like the 3000's missions for the last 20 years. "To serve customers across virtually every industry – including more than half of our fellow Fortune 500 companies. We don’t just encourage an entrepreneurial spirit, we embody it."

The company also has an eye out for the future. Back in May, Stanfield said the company needed a plan that reached out farther than 2027. It's the kind of mission an architect takes on, a move away from the four high-end N-Class servers working at Veritiv. Ensuring value for money gets amplified while replacing HP's 3000 hardware for a long run. "We don't need to ignore the issue of hardware," Stanfield said while investigating migration partners. "We need to put together a better long term plan than staying on the HP 3000 for more than 10 years."

The decade to come might be the final one for the MPE/iX, although it's pretty certain some companies will keep 3000s in service beyond 2028. The issue isn't a CALENDAR workaround; we're pretty sure the market will see that emerge in 2027, or maybe sooner. The requirement that can move any company, no matter how devoted they're been to 3000-style computing, is application savvy. Whoever will be supporting MANMAN in 2028 is likely to have that market to themselves. By some accounts, MANMAN only has a handful of working experts left in the market.

Architects like Stanfield, who come from 3000 bedrock, will understand that moving away from such MPE/iX apps takes patience and detailed study. They'll benefit from application expertise while they migrate, too. Stanfield had a list of questions for the 3000 community architects who've already migrated, to help in re-architecting Veritiv's IT.

1. What system did you convert to (Unix/Windows/Linux)?2. What system did you convert from(HP3000 A-class/N-class?) and how busy was the system? Number of users? 3. Are you still running that system? 4. Did you convert to using the Eloquence DB?5. Performance after conversion: good or bad?6. Any Do's or Don't's?7. Primary Code base (Speedware/Powerhouse/Cobol/Fortran)? Amount of code converted?

The issue might look like needing to be off the system before MPE/iX stops date-keeping in 2028. But as another savvy veteran of application services said to me this week, "The experts will fix the date issue, but it will be too late—because the app always drives the ecosystem, not the hardware or OS."

One takeaway from that prediction is a homespun app suite stands a greater chance of remaining in service by 2028. The IT manager has long been told that applications can be peeled off into production like aces off a deck of cards. As much as software's commodity future has been promised, though, there's always been customization. Some IT pro must stay available to IT to tend to those modifications of commodity software. Those kind of mods are not the same kind of problem the MANMAN user faces, where source code mods will kick some systems offline on the day all of the MANMAN experts finally retire.

However, future-proofing IT goes beyond choosing a commodity solution. Most companies will want to be "shaping our systems and processes to support a successful and sustainable future," like Veritiv says in its mission statement. Systems and processes were at the heart of the 3000's initial business success. The experience is good bedrock to build a future upon.

July 07, 2017

Fine-tune Friday: opening disk, adding HASS

I need contiguous file space for my XM log file. How do I get this?

Many operations on the HP 3000 require contiguous disk space. Other files also require contiguous space; for example, consider the contiguous disk space on LDEV 1 required for an OS update. If you do not have one of the several third-party products that will create contiguous disk space on a drive, you may still be able to get enough free space by using CONTIGVOL.

However, occasionally, CONTIGVOL will stop with a message of “*Warning: Contigvol - Inverse Extent Table Full, Internal resource limit.” What can you do? Run it again. HP’s Goetz Neumann reported the message "is a warning that an internal table has filled up. It appears CONTIGVOL only handles looking at 40,000 extents at a time. You can run CONTIGVOL multiple times if the first run does not condense the free space enough because of this limitation.

I am adding two drives to a HASS (Jamaica) enclosure that already has several drives. How do I do this?

Gilles Schipper, Lars Appel and Chris Bartram reply:

First, a note of caution. If you dynamically add disk drives to, say, your MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET, you could find yourself in a pickle if you subsequently perform a START RECOVERY by accident or design. So while you can add drives dynamically as a convenience, it is a good idea to schedule a SHUTDOWN, START NORECOVERY as soon as possible to “fix” the new drives in your base configuration.

You do not even have to take down the system to add the drives to an HASS enclosure. The following steps will do the job.

• Set proper SCSI IDs. Make sure the SCSI addresses of the HASS enclosures are what you believe them to be. Do not make any assumptions. You need to set the SCSI address dip switches properly and ensure they are unique for the controller they are attached to. You will probably need a little flashlight to check the settings.

• Plug in the new drives.

• Use IOCONFIG to add the appropriate paths and device IDs. Note that the ldevs cannot be in use by, for example, vt or telnet sessions. So, you may still need to do this “off hours.”

• Use VOLUTIL to NEWVOL or NEWSET. For example,

:volutil>newvol mpexl_system_volume_set:member99 99 100 100

(This example is for LDEV 99 — the “99” in member99 does not need to correspond to the LDEV number, it only needs to be unique for that volume set.)

It might be a good idea to first run the drives in a NEWSET for a while, exercising them a little. You could also use that extra volume set to exercise seldom used VOLUTIL commands or NEWACCT options like ONVS/HOMEVS. Finally, SCRATCHVOL them and add them to the desired volume set.

July 05, 2017

Heritage HP Jazz notes, preserved for all

It was a wistful July 4 here at the Newswire. For about a day it seemed that a piece of the 3000's legacy disappeared, knowledge hard-earned and sometimes proven useful. The address for HP's Jazz webserver archived content wasn't delivering. It seemed like a new 3000 icon had gone missing when a manager on the 3000-L newsgroup went looking for Jazz notes and programs.

HP called the web server Jazz when it began to stock the HP 3000 with utilities, whitepapers, tech reports, and useful scripts. It was named Jazz after Jeri Ann Smith, the lab expert from the 3000 division who was instrumental at getting a website rolling for 3000 managers. JAS became Jazz, and the server sounded off flashy opening notes.

This is the sort of resource the community has been gathering in multiple places. One example is 3k Ranger, where Keven Miller is "attempting to gather HP 3000 web content, much of it from the Wayback Machine. From the "links" page, under the Archive sites, there are lots of things that have been< disappearing." Miller's now got an HP manual set in HTML

What might have been lost, if Speedware (now Fresche Legacy) had not preserved the software and wisdom of Jazz during its website renovation early last month? Too much. HP licensed the Jazz papers and programs to Client Systems, its North American distributor at the time, as well as Speedware. Much has changed since 2009, though.

Client Systems is no longer on the web at all. The Jazz content is safe in the hands of Fresche, which licensed the material from HP. It was only the URL that changed, evolving at the same time Fresche shifted its domain address to freschesolutions.com. The Jazz material was once at hpmigrations.com. Now you must add an explicit page address, hpmigrations.com/HPe3000_resources, where you'll find white papers include these Jazz gems, like the following papers.

Securing FTP/iX explores methods to increase FTP/iX security based on FTP/iX enhancements. Options for Managing a DTC Remotely covers issues and potential solutions for managing DTCs in networks. There's manual for HP's UPS Monitor Utility and configuring a CI script executed after a power failure; A report on using disk space beyond the first 4GB on LDEV 1; A feasibility paper about making TurboIMAGE thread-aware, as well as supporting the fork() call when a database is open.

But HP also wrote about using Java Servlets on the 3000, as well as showing how to employ CGI examples in C, Pascal and Perl to access data via a 3000 web server. There's Web Enabling Your HP 3000, a paper "describing various ways to webify your 3000 applications and includes descriptions of many third party tools."

Agreed, the white papers might've been lost without as much dismay. The programs from Jazz would've been more of a loss. All that follow include the working links available as of this week. Every access requires an "agree" to the user license for the freeware.

CIVARS - A zipped tarball containing two COBOL programs. One sets the variable MYSECOND to the number of seconds in the current time. The other sets a variable named YYYYMMDDHHMMSS. Thanks to Glenn Koster and Lars Appel. Note: in 6.0 it is easy to get current date and time using the HPDATETIME and the HPHHMMSSMMM predefined variables.

dnscheck - a shell script to check your e3000's DNS configuration. Run this script, correct any problems that it detects, and then re-run until no more problems are found.

FWSCSI - NM program displays the revisons of the firmware for all NIO Fast/Wide SCSI interfaces in the system and avoids the need to use the xt diagnostic tool for each card on the system. Note that these interfaces may only be present in 900 series e3000 systems, not A/N-class systems. Recommended firmware 3728 or 3944.

HP-IB device checker - script that runs on early 5.0 and later, and reports all HP-IB and FL devices on your system.

June 26, 2017

How to give Quiz good answers for email

HP 3000 manager John Sommers needs help with his Quiz reports. They used to work through the mails, but now they're not being delivered.

"I used to have Quiz send its output to users directly from the HP 3000," he said in a message to me. "I'm not sure how else to attach files to an electronic message in an automated fashion and distribute them. It might not have been pretty and fancy, but it was 110 percent functional and reliable."

Email and the HP 3000 don't have a close relationship by 2017. A few weeks ago we traced the options for emailing on the HP 3000 and saw that Netmail 3000 from 3k Associates is still supported and working in some datacenters. That's as good as HP 3000 email will get today. There's also Sendmail inside of the HP 3000 OS (plenty of configuration needed there) and a few other free options. Sommers' request is different, though. He didn't need his 3000 to distribute the mail. He needs email to distribute 3000 data -- in specific, Quiz reports.

Our newest sponsor Hillary Software has offered software for a long time that will do this. Well seasoned, byRequest is, and it works with enterprise servers across the Unix, Linux, and Windows worlds, as well as MPE/iX. Forms are another area where the 3000's data goes out to work, and Hillary's got forms software. Minisoft also has a forms solution it has customized and tailored for individual applications like QAD, SAP, Oracle, as well as strong links to the HP 3000 and application suites like MANMAN.

eFormz is in its 11th major release by now. A 3-minute YouTube video leads you through the reasons for revamping your ideas about using forms with data from enterprise servers like the HP 3000. You can market to the customer using a form that doubles as a shipping label, for example.

The HP 3000 will always have some link to the rest of the IT world, so long as it carries enterprise-grade data. Gateway programs like byRequest and eFormz make that data work. Quiz might seem like it's not pretty or fancy, but the reporting software was scattered across the 3000 world like apple seeds when ERP was called MRP and MANMAN was new. It has that 110 percent functional advantage, too.

June 23, 2017

Friday Fine-Tune: A 3000's Intrinsic Savvy

As the clock counts down to the 10-year deadline for calendar services changes, our thoughts turn to HPCALENDAR. That's the intrinsic HP wrote for the 6.0 and 7.x releases of the 3000 OS, a new tool to solve an old problem. Alas, HPCALENDAR is fresher than the bedrock CALENDAR, but it's only callable in the 3000's Native Mode.

But poking into the online resources for MPE Intrinsics, I learned that once more HP's re-shelved its 3000 docs. Things have gotten better: everything now lives on the much-better-focused HP Enterprise website. You can, for the moment, locate the guidelines to intrinsics for MPE/iX at hpe.com.

The Intrinsics Manual for MPE/iX 7.x is also a PDF file at Team NA Consulting. Independents like Neil Armstrong help the community that's using HP's resources for 3000s these days. It used to be much simpler. In the 1990s, the Interex user group ran a collection of well-written white papers by George Stachnik. We're lucky enough to have them with us today, cut loose from ownership and firewalls. One is devoted to the system's intrinsics.

By the time The HP 3000--for Complete Novices, Part 17: Using Intrinsics was posted on the 3K Associates website, Stachnik was working in technical training in HP's Network Server Division. He'd first written these papers for Interact, the technical journal devoted to 3000 savvy for more than two decades. Even though Interact is long out of print, Stachnik's savvy is preserved in multiple web outposts.

Stachnik explains why intrinsics tap the inherent advantage of using an HP 3000.

When an application program calls an MPE/iX intrinsic, the intrinsic places itself in MPE/iX's "privileged mode." The concept of privileged mode is one of the key reasons for the HP 3000's legendary reputation for reliability. Experienced IT managers have learned to be very wary of application programs that access system internal data structures directly. They demand that MPE/iX place restrictions on HP 3000 applications, to prevent them from doing anything that could foul up the system. This is what led to the development of the intrinsics. Application programs running in user mode can interact with the operating system only by invoking intrinsics.

Even if your company has a migration in mind, or doesn't have an unlimited lifespan for the 3000, knowing how intrinsics work is an intrinsic part of learning 3000 fine-tuning that might be inside classic applications. Tools can help to hunt down intrinsics, but it helps to know what they do and what they're called. You can fine-tune your 3000 knowledge using Stachnik's papers and HP's Intrinsic documentation.

June 21, 2017

What must be waiting when a 3000 moves

Transfers have been in 3000 futures for many years. Until 2012, all of the transfers were to other environments. Unix, Windows, Linux. SAP, Oracle and its apps, Salesforce. All very different from the world of MPE/iX and IMAGE/SQL.

Then Charon arrived and companies could preserve their legacy environments inside new hardware. No more PA-RISC HP iron in this infrastructure. When a site decides to use the Stromasys software, though, the door comes open for new capabilities. Charon provides the MPE/iX bedrock, riding on top of a Linux base that's hosted on an Intel server. What else do you need?

There are other platforms to support and integrate into your IMAGE/SQL databases. These platforms run on many environments, crossing servers of all kinds, even those in the cloud. PDF files, Excel and Word documents. They're the specific carriers of information that started on the HP 3000. A well-known and up-to-date software package delivers those platforms to IMAGE/SQL data as well as reports.

Hillary Software's byRequest, as well as its other products, does this job. As it has for more than 20 years. The software runs under MPE/iX for maximum integration. Linux, Windows, the other operating environments that run on that Charon Intel server. A 3000 manager wanted to give his MPE/iX apps the power to appear as PDF providers.

Ray Shahan mentioned such a project on the 3000 newsgroup.

We’re looking at storing all of our printable historical transaction docs on the HP 3000 as PDF docs in a SQL Server database. We’ve looked at winpcl2pdf that uses GhostPCL, but had some issues using it due to the CCTL from the 3000.

Shahan makes a good point about the value of freeware, which can be worth what you pay for it. The 3000's got those CCTL nuances, and then there's the font issues. Hillary describes onHand as a "virtual file cabinet."

Eliminate the clutter and clumsiness of Windows and FTP folder storage methods. E-file directly from byREQUEST into onHand. Control document security and document retention timeframes as you publish. Use the power of an SQL relational database with onHand for both short and long term archives.

Archiving is a mission in steep growth for HP 3000s, since the servers carry so much company history in their databases. Buying the most skilled tool can be a worthwhile investment. There are few out there that handle all reporting -- and know the world of MPE/iX and the 3000 -- as well as the Hillary products. PDF is one of the byRequest specialties.

June 19, 2017

3000 consulting returns not so costly

Last week a reader sent a request for resources to help him re-enter the HP 3000 marketplace. We'll just let his question speak for itself to explain why returning to MPE is an option.

I spent 26 years on HP 3000 systems and loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, I have not touched one in the last six years. When the Charon emulator came out I never downloaded a copy for personal use; and now they don't offer that option. I am going to retire soon, and I am thinking about picking up some 3000 consulting work and get back to what I love. I was wondering if there is any type of online 3000 emulator that I could use to brush up with.

While the answer might seem to be no, HP 3000s can be much more available for a seasoned pro like this one who's taking on a retirement career. (That's a job that pays less than your life's work, but one you'd wait a lifetime to start again.) HP 3000s are in copious supply, if you're seeking HP's hardware, and they don't cost much anymore — if for personal training purposes, you're not particular about an MPE/iX license transfer. Earlier this month we saw notice of $500 Series 918 systems. Built in the 1990s, of course. But good enough for consulting refreshment.

Charon has a newer pedigree of hardware, but indeed, it's got no freeware personal-use download any longer. Professional and experienced installation of the PA-RISC emulator from Stromasys guarantees a stable replacement for HP's aging hardware.

OpenMPE set up a community HP 3000 that's become a managed asset operated by Tracy Johnson. One part of Johnson's server runs the classic HP 3000 game Empire, for example. The nature of 3000 consulting runs from operational to development. OpenMPE's server is open for $99 yearly accounts, including all HP SUBSYS programs.

June 16, 2017

Friday Fine-Tune: Cleaning Up Correctly

Classic 3000 AdviceBy John Burke

Good intentions about maintenance sometimes stumble in their implementation. As an example, here’s a request for help on cleaning up.

“We have a 989/650 system. Every weekend we identify about 70,000 files to delete off the system. I build a jobstream that basically executes a file that has about 70 thousand lines. Each line says ‘PURGE file.group.account’. This job has become a real hog. It launches at 6 AM on Sunday morning, but by 7 PM on Sunday night it has only purged about 20,000 files. While this job is running, logons take upwards of 30 seconds. What can I do?”

This reminds me of the old joke where the guy goes to the doctor and complains “Gee, doc, my arm hurts like hell when I move it like this. What can I do?” The doctor looks at him and says “Stop moving it like that.” But seriously, the user above is lucky the files are not all in the same group or he would be experiencing system failures like the poor user two years ago who was only trying to purge 40,000 files.

In either case, the advice is the same; purge the files in reverse alphabetic order. This will avoid a system failure if you already have too many files in a group or HFS directory, and it will dramatically improve system performance in all cases. However, several people on the 3000-L list have pointed out that if you find you need to purge 70,000 files per week, you should consider altering your procedures to use temporary files. Or if that will not work, purge the files as soon as you no longer need them rather than wait until it becomes a huge task.

If all the files are in one group and you want to purge only a subset of the files in the group, you have to purge the files in reverse alphabetical order to avoid the System Abort (probably SA2200). PURGEGROUP and PURGEACCT will be successful, but at the expense of having to recreate the accounting structure and restoring the files you want to keep. Note that if you log onto the group and then do PURGEGROUP you will not have to recreate the group.

Craig Fairchild, MPE/iX File System Architect explained what is going on. “Your system abort [or performance issues] stem from the fact that the system is trying desperately to make sure that all the changes to your directory are permanently recorded. To do this, MPE uses its Transaction Management (XM) facility on all directory operations.

“To make sure that the directories are not corrupted, XM takes a beginning image of the area of the directory being changed, and after the directory operation is complete, it takes an after image. In this way, should the system ever crash in the middle of a directory operation, XM can always recover the directory to a consistent state - either before or after the operation, but not in a corrupted in-between state.

“On MPE, directories are actually just special files with records for each other file or directory that is contained in them. They are stored in sorted alphabetical order, with the disk address of the file label for that file. Because we must keep this list of files in alphabetical order, if you add or delete a file, the remaining contents of the file need to be “shifted” to make room, or to compact the directory. So if you purge the first file alphabetically, XM must record the entire contents of the directory file as the before image, and the entire remaining file as the after image.

“So purging from the top of the directory causes us to log data equal to twice the size of the directory. Purging from the bottom of directory causes XM to log much less data, since most of the records stay in the same place and their contents don’t change. The system abort comes from the fact that more data is being logged to XM than it can reliably record. When its logs fill completely and it can no longer provide protection for the transactions that have been initiated, XM will crash the system to ensure data integrity.”

Goetz Neumann added, “PURGEGROUP (and PURGEACCT) do not cause a SA2200 risk, since they actually traverse the directory in reverse alphabetical order internally. This is useful to know for performance reasons. Since these commands cause much smaller XM transactions, it is faster to empty a group by logging into it and then PURGEGROUP it, instead of using PURGE @.

“There is a little-known tool to help prevent you from running into these situations in the first place: DIRLIMIT.MPEXL.TELESUP. A suggested (soft) limit for directory files would be 2MB. This would limit MPE to not have more than 50,000 files in one group, and (very much depending on the filenames) much less than 50,000 files per HFS directory. (These are XM protected just as well, and tens of thousands of files in an HFS directory is not a good idea from a performance standpoint, either.)

“Another way to reduce the risk of SA2200 in these situations would be to increase the size of the XM system log file (on the volume set that holds the group with the large number of files), which is available in a VOLUTIL command.

June 14, 2017

Wayback Wed: Blog takes aim at 3000 news

Twelve years ago this week we opened the 3000 NewsWire's blog, starting with coverage of a departed 3000 icon, a migration tool built by a 3000 vendor to assist database developers, as well as a split up of HP's two largest operations. The pages of this blog were devoted to these major areas: updates from the 3000 homesteading community, insights on how to move off the 3000, and the latest News Outta HP, as we continue to call it today. After 2,978 articles, we move into the 13th year of online 3000 news.

Bruce Toback died in the week we launched. He was a lively and witty developer who'd created the Formation utility software for managing 3000 forms printing. A heart attack felled him before age 50, one of those jolts that reminded me that we can't be certain how much time we're given to create. Bruce expanded the knowledge of the community with wit and flair.

Quest Software rolled out its first version of Toad, software that migrating 3000 sites could employ to simplify SQL queries. The initial version was all about accessing Oracle database, but the current release is aimed at open source SQL databases. Open source SQL was in its earliest days in 2005, part of what the world was calling LAMP: Linux, Apache, MySQL and Python-PHP-Perl. Quest was also selling Bridgeware in a partnership with Taurus Software in 2005. That product continues to bridge data between 3000s and migration targets like Oracle.

HP was dividing its non-enterprise business to conquer the PC world in our first blog week. The company separated its Printer and PC-Imaging units, a return to the product-focused organization of HP's roots. Infamous CEO Carly Fiorina was gone and replacement Mark Hurd was still in his honeymoon days. Todd Bradley, who HP had hired away from mobile system maker Palm, got the PC unit reins and ran wild. Before he was cut loose in 2013, the PC business swelled to $13 billion a year and HP was Number 1. HP missed the mobile computing wave, a surprise considering Bradley came from Palm. You can't win them all.

That HP success in PCs, all driven by Windows, reflected the OS platform leader and wire-to-wire winner of migration choices for 3000 owners.

During that June we polled 3000 managers about their migration destinations for 2005. Windows had an early lead that it exploded in the years to come, but in the third year of what we called the Transition Era, HP-UX still accounted for almost one-third of migration targets. The raw totals were

The IBM iSeries got mentioned twice, and one HP 3000 company has moved to Apple's Unix, which most of us know as OS X.

With 71 companies reporting their migration plans or accomplishments, HP-UX managed to poke above the 30 percent mark. Unix overall accounts for more than half of the targets.

The main information source at the time we launched the blog was the NewsWire's printed edition. During the summer of 2005 that would shift, so by the end of 2005 the print appeared quarterly and the blog articles flowed on workdays. In the print issue of that first blog month, the migration news read like this.

Larger 3000 sites make up the majority of early migration adopters, many of whom choose HP-UX to replace MPE/iX. Now the smaller sites are turning to a migration challenge they hope to meet on a familiar platform: Microsoft’s Windows.

While HP-UX has notched its victories among MPE/iX sites, the typical small-to-midsize 3000 customer is choosing a more popular platform.

“We have never learned Unix or Linux, only MPE and Windows, and it is a lot easier to hire and train Windows people,” said Dennis Boruck of CMC Software, makers of the Blackstone judicial application. Blackstone’s success in the Clark County, Nevada courts led HP to highlight the Blackstone MPE/iX application in a success story.

Some customers express a reluctance to put mission-critical computing onto Windows platforms. But Windows’ familiarity has won it many converts. “We are moving to a Windows 2003 Server environment because it is the easiest to manage compared to Unix or Linux,” said programmer supervisor E. Martin Gilliam of the Wise County, Va. data processing department.

Carter-Pertaine, makers of K-12 software, said Speedware’s migration path to HP-UX is guiding the first phase of its customer migration strategy. But Quintessential School Systems, which is the C-P parent, is working on a Linux option.

By now Linux is an establishment choice for on-premise datacenters and the bedrock of Amazon Web Services where most computing clouds gather. The platforms of 2017 have evolved to consider databases and infrastructures as their keystones, rather than operating systems. Bridgeware, jointly developed by Quest and Taurus Software, still moves data between 3000s and the rest of the database world. Today's Bridgeware datasheet language acknowledges there's still 3000 IMAGE data at work in the world.

For years, IT managers have been faced with the difficult task of making data from IMAGE and other MPE-based files available. With the retirement of the HP 3000, this has become an even greater need. Taurus’ BridgeWare ETL software solution greatly simplifies the task of moving data between databases and files on MPE, Windows, UNIX and Linux systems, allowing you to easily migrate, or replicate your data to extend the life or phase out your HP 3000.

June 12, 2017

Emulation proposes to fix 3000 antiquation

A few weeks back, an ardent reader of the Newswire asked about our HP 3000 Memoirs Project. I shared a link to the History section of the Newswire, a subject we never featured in our printed editions. I figured I was chatting with a fan of the server until I asked, "What are you doing with your HP 3000 these days?"

"Dying, that's what. I cannot believe that my place of business still uses this antiquated platform as their system of record."

There's no reason to take this personally if you disagree. Webster's tells us that antiquated means "outmoded or discredited by reason of age; old and no longer useful, popular, or accepted." Some of this is true of the computing we still call HP 3000. (Some just call the server "the HP," which I take as a sign of less-ardent interest.)

However, the antiquated object in management cross-hairs begins with the 3000 hardware. HP's gear is a growing liability, unless you're smart enough to have independent support for the Hewlett-Packard systems. If not, there's a way to eliminate antiquated from the capital equipment list of problems.

The whitepaper does a fine job of illuminating each of these reasons' shortcomings. The No. 1 reason for waiting to emulate fits neatly with my reader's opinion of their HP 3000.

"I do believe the 3000 has a place in history," she said. "But I do mean history. Not a current system that cannot even be cross-walked to anything current."

For the record, the hardware that drives MPE/iX can be cross-walked to current servers, networks, software infrastructure, and storage. That's what the Stromasys emulator does: brings the hardware up to date. Of late, there's an outreach to put MPE/iX servers into the cloud. The Stromasys Charon HPA technology is in place to make that a reality.

MPE/iX itself could be considered antiquated. The OS was last updated by its maker in 2008. Only the laws of logic, though, and not those of physics will wear down this 3000-computing component. Drives, processor boards, fans, batteries — they'll all fail someday because physics remain predictable. Parts wear down, burn out, become unpredictable.

Logic, though, remains as constant as its makers intended. The thing that wears out first is always the hardware. Software advances eventually cripple original hardware. iPhone owners learned last week that the iOS 11 release will not run on iPhones from 5C and earlier. MPE/iX has left lots of hardware behind: the systems that failed to start one day, or run as slowly as an iPhone 5C. You can hunker down on old software with an iPhone, but it works poorly in just a little time. Not a decade and counting, like MPE/iX.

June 07, 2017

CSL image shimmers today on open website

The era of the Contributed Software Library ended officially when Interex ended its lifespan. The CSL was an asset that never made it into the bankruptcy report about the user group. In a lot of ways it was the most tangible thing Interex ever did. CSL tapes -- yes, DDS cartridges -- still flutter about the 3000 community. Programs are on disks. Finding the whole shebang has been tricky. This week, it's less so.

Knowing what's inside the CSL is less difficult to discern. Tracy Johnson operates a 3000 called Empire under the auspices of OpenMPE. Empire knows what's in the CSL. The Empire program list is just that, though: an index to programs that don't reside on the Empire server. Managers can match the index with a downloadable CSL image referenced on the Facebook group HP 3000 Appreciation Society. What is available has a good pedigree, although recent achievements are murky.

When a manager wanted to track down something called HPMAIL, the 3000-L readers learned a lot, as is often the case. One of the most interesting revelations was the location of a CSL release that can be downloaded. The short answer is a link from Frank McConnell at the HP 3000 Appreciation Society. "It's a copy of the CSL tape," reported Ian Warner on the 3000-L list. "It’s not exactly straightforward, but for now there is a CSL ISO image on the Web."

CSL software once drove attendance at Interex user conferences. Not entirely, but a manager could get the latest of the 80s-90s era freeware by contributing a program. All the contributions would be copied onto a swap tape -- something you could only get at the conference (an attending friend could pick up yours for you, if memory serves).

For example, one program called Whitman Mail was award winning. A 1989 Robelle contest for best new CSL program named the Whitman Electronic Mail System as the winner during that year PA-RISC was only first arriving for most of the community. Yes, that long ago. Neil Armstrong of Robelle forwarded the citation that MAIL received.

This electronic mail system provided the most user value. Many sites have been put off from E-mail by the cost and complexity -- now they can try E-mail at virtually no cost, and with a system that is extremely accessible. Whitman mail is a great way to get started. Later, if you need a multi-CPU network, file transfer or other specific features, you can purchase a supported product.

It's quaint to think of datacenters where a multi-CPU net was an option instead of a fundamental. File transfer is an essential benefit a 3000 mail program delivers by today, and it looks like Whitman Mail might still be lacking in that department -- hence, Robelle's nod toward supported software. These are different days in some ways. And not so different.

Unsupported software, or community-supported shareware, can be essential to a datacenter. WordPress, which drives untold corporate websites, is still free and open source. Support options for this stuff are everywhere as indie companies (like Pivital Solutions for the 3000) fix and integrate software. The CSL had this, too. It was called Interex volunteers, or support companies. Everyone knew about CSL and a surprising amount of the software was wired into production shops.

To be complete about searching the CSL (if you've already downloaded that disk image) here's Johnson's instructions on how to do an index search of that 1995 CSL set.

June 05, 2017

Where to Take Receipt of Mail for the 3000

Some HP 3000 sites have little remaining budget for purchasing software for their systems. This state of affairs can change quickly. Company management can discover a hard-working and little-known application, one that will work even harder with a bit of software tied into it. (Minisoft's ODBC middleware comes to mind, as it did when it rose up at See's Candies just a year ago.)

Email, though, is harder. That application hosted from a 3000 never had a strong hold on corporate computing unless companies were good at looking at the future (3k Associates' NetMail saw the future and led MPE/iX shops to it) or deeply rooted in the past. HP Deskmanager was from a past where it ran Hewlett-Packard for more than a decade. HP Desk came into the world in the 3000's heyday of the 1980s. Tim O'Neill's 3000 shops held onto it through the Unix version of HP Desk. By his account, they came away from Deskmanager muttering.

There are bona fide motivations for making the 3000's data accessible to email transport, though. Mission critical information still needs to bolt from person to person as fast as lightning. ByRequest from Hillary Software sends 3000 reports around a company using email. The mail engine itself is nearly always running on a non-3000 server.

The most classic integration is to have a mail server on the 3000 itself. This was the wheelhouse for NetMail, which remains a current, supported choice for the site that can invest in mission-critical updates to their 3000s. Mail isn't often in that category for spending on MPE/iX. The community has managers who want to install nothing but shareware and open source and Contributed Software Library tools. So manager John Sommer reached out to the 3000-L mailing list to find a CSL email program. Everybody learned a lot, as is often the case. One of the most interesting revelations was the location of a CSL release that can be downloaded.

At that Web address, a raft of contributed software containing the string "MAIL" resides inside the disk image. Tracy Johnson, keeper of CSL tape indexes at his Empire web server, located the names of 65 CSL programs either containing MAIL in the program names or with "mail" in their descriptions. Johnson's list was printed from a 1995 CSL release. During that year, Compuserve ruled the emailing world, along with a Unix shareware program elm.

The 3000 had its shareware, too. Sendmail was on the rise and remains the latest open-source ported mailing tool for the 3000. Mark Bixby did the Sendmail port, along with Syslog/iX, which Sendmail requires. NetMail/3000 was out, growing its feature set, making commercial email a reality. There was also MAILNM (the last two letters signify Native Mode, a clue about how old that code is). Time-machine riders can get the final version of MAILNM from 3k Ranger, who's also hosting that Sendmail version.

One freeware mail program first written at Whitman College is called MAIL. This MAIL seems to be what John Sommer was seeking. It's a part of the CSL disk image. Sommer's search for MAIL turned up the downloadable CSL image. Nobody can be sure of the legal status of CSL software today, but if you're downloading 15-year-old software for production use, legal issues probably are not your biggest concern.

One wag quipped that finding and using the CSL software required "getting the Delorean up to 88 MPH." (Back to the Future fans know this reference.) Managers of today don't need a wayback engine to get supported 3000 email running on MPE/iX. NetMail is there for that and its creator Chris Bartram still knows his way around MPE and mail protocols better than anyone else I know.

Patrick Santucci, who supported 3000s at Cornerstone Brands until that corporation, took everybody down memory lane with a HP Deskmanager recap.

I remember HPDesk. Kind of had a love/hate relationship with it. I loved the hierarchical way it was organized and the excellent use of the function keys. But I hated that pretty much anything and everything in HPDesk was only accessible from HPDesk. It did not play well with Novell or Lotus Notes, which is what I believe we used at the time. I think we finally did get it integrated, though it was just a PITA. But yes, I have fond memories of writing daily updates in HPDesk!

Quiz is at the heart of why Sommer wants 1990s shareware on his 3000. He said he loaded HPMAIL up on a 3000 in the past. Some have described HPMAIL as the precursor to HP Desk. Finding HPMAIL requires a very fast DeLorean.

June 02, 2017

Sendmail fine-tunes, if you still need delivery

By Andreas Schmidt,with Mark Bixby, and Jens von Bülow

Relying on the HP 3000, you may want to use this box for incoming and outgoing e-mails as well. This is possible using a collection of software bundled with the HP 3000, or available in the public domain:

• Sendmail/iX, the mail transport agent well known on HP-UX that was ported to MPE/iX;

• Syslog/iX, the event logging subsystem required by Sendmail/iX;

• MAILX.HPBIN.SYS, the mail reader, and;

• Qpopper, the POP3 protocol for downloading.

Sendmail/iX and Syslog/iX have been ported to MPE. MAILX.HPBIN.SYS is part of the Posix shell part of each MPE/iX release since 4.5. The combination of all four of these utilities will enable your HP 3000 to receive Internet e-mails sent to you@host.domain and send Internet e-mails into intranets.

Syslog/iX

Syslog is the standard event logging subsystem for Unix. It consists of a server daemon, a client function library, and a client command line utility. It is possible to log to files, terminal devices logged on users, or forward to other syslog systems. Syslog can accept data from the local system via an AF_UNIX socket, or from any system on the network via an AIF_INET UDP socket on port 514. The sendmail mail transport package is one of the Internet tools which log to syslog. Syslog/iX is bundled with MPE/iX in the SYSLOG account. If somebody was a little too aggressive about cleaning up unused FOS files, you can restore the SYSLOG account from the backup of your OS. Otherwise, you can locate your FOS tape and manually extract and install the SYSLOG account.

Sendmail/iX

Sendmail is a mail transport that accepts fully formatted e-mail messages from local host system users, queues the messages, and then delivers the messages to local or remote users. It listens on TCP port 25 for incoming SMTP messages from remote systems, and delivers these messages to local host system users by appending the message text to the user’s mailbox file.

Sendmail is not a mail user agent. It does not have the ability to compose or to read e-mail. To cover this functionality, HP bundled the program /SYS/HPBIN/MAILX into the shell utilities. Sendmail is also not a POP3 server that will enable network clients to access Sendmail/iX mailboxes.

MAILX.HPBIN.SYS

This program helps read and send electronic mail messages. It has no built-in facilities for sending messages to other systems. But combined with other programs (a mail routing agent and a transport agent like Sendmail/iX) it can send messages to other systems. MAILX only offers limited support for various message headers (i.e. Subject:, From:, To:, Cc:, etc). If you need to do anything fancy, like MIME headers, you’ll need to call SENDMAIL.PUB.SENDMAIL directly and pass it a fully formatted message containing all headers and body text.

To read messages from your mailbox in /usr/mail/ type :MAILX.HPBIN.SYS

The files in /usr/mail/ are named USER.ACCOUNT and are accessible only for this user.

Qpopper

Qpopper is a server that supports the POP3 protocol for downloading Internet e-mail from software clients. Qpopper does not include a message transfer agent or SMTP support but normally works with standard Unix mail transfer agents such as sendmail. On MPE/iX it works therefore perfectly with Sendmail/iX.

The installation procedure basics are:

• The link /usr/local/bin/popper must point to /SYS/ARPA/POPPER.

• In SERVICES.NET.SYS, port 110/tcp must be reserved for pop3 service.

Having successfully installed this, you may now change your Internet browser so that your HP 3000 is the incoming POP3 server. You may do as we did: we created a new account POP3 with plain vanilla users per mailbox. The PC e-mail client needs to be configured in the following way:

Server Name: your POP3-enabled HP 3000

Server Type: POP3 Server, User Name: USER1.POP3 (e.g., SCHMIDA.POP3)

You may want to remember to set a password and an adequate check time for new e-mail. It’s up to you whether you want to download the new messages to the PC and not to keep on the host or not.

A nice feature is the aliasing in Sendmail/iX. Your HP 3000 acts as a POP3 and SMTP server for all Internet e-mail software agents.

Is there a proper way to shut down sendmail?

• Use the Posix kill signal from SERVER.SENDMAIL or any user with SM capability. (The following can be easily turned into a job.)

kill $(head -n 1 /etc/mail/sendmail.pid)

• Only use :ABORTJOB as a last resort! (This is true for all of the Posix things that got ported to MPE)

If you don't need to run a mail server (e.g. sendmail) on your 3000, you shouldn't. In most cases, using a mail client will be "just the ticket." Point the client at your in-house (SMTP) mail server and enjoy.

May 31, 2017

Laser ruling a draft for 3000 owners' rights

LaserJets are wired into the history of the HP 3000. Hewlett-Packard never would have developed the printer that changed HP without a 3000 line in place. The business printer was designed to give minicomputer users a way to print without tractor-feed paper, fan-fold greenbar or dot-matrix daisywheels. That was more than 30 years ago. A Supreme Court decision on laser printing this week has a chance at affecting the future of HP's 3000 iron.

The ruling handed down this week was focused on a lawsuit between an HP rival, Lexmark, and a company that builds and sells Lexmark replacement toner cartridges. Lexmark tried to assert that its patent protection for laser toner cartridges extends to the buyers of the cartridges. Nobody could refill that Lexmark-built cartridge but Lexmark, the print giant said.

The upstart Impression Products has been buying used cartridges from the customers and refilling them. If this sounds like healthy commerce to you, then you agree with the decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts this week. Even though a company can protect a patent as it sells the product, the patent doesn't hold if the product is resold, or modified and resold. An article at WashingtonPost.com — where 3000 legend Eugene Volokh leads a popular law blog — has all the details.

HP is not in the story except for a line at the bottom, which notes how seminal the LaserJet remains in the story of printing. An earlier edition, the correction notes, used the word laserjet instead of laser printer. The 3000's future ownership might ride on how courts determine the Supreme's decision. You can resell a car that you've modified and break no law. HP has long maintained the HP iron called a 3000 is no vehicle, though, even while it carries the magic rider called MPE.

In 1999 the 3000 market saw a swarm of resellers who hawked MPE iron at below-average prices. These computers were HP 3000s when they booted up, but their pedigree was often stolen with a support software product. People went to jail, HP created a sorta-enforcement team that operated alongside real officers. At the worst of it, Client Systems' Phoenix 3000 official resellers claimed the FBI might come and take away a 3000 with sketchy papers.

As a result of the disputes over ownership, HP said that its 3000 iron doesn't exist, and cannot be owned, without a license for MPE/iX. The ownership chain flowed from the license, the vendor said. It was like a car in the sense that you didn't have a vehicle fit for the road if you didn't have plates. HP owned the plates (the software) and only licensed those bits. MPE/iX has never been sold, they said. Only licensed.

The new court ruling states that a manufacturer's rights to a product that's been sold stop once the maker (or a reseller for the vendor) sell the product. That old Volkswagen Beetle you bought and tricked out for dune buggy status? VW has no hold on how you attach mufflers, or even if the teenagers down the block pay you for the modified Bug.

Tying a physical product to a digital controlling component (HP's 3000 hardware to MPE/iX) was a strategy the community wanted to battle. Wirt Atmar, founder of AICS Research and indefatigable MPE advocate, looked into untying HP's MPE-3000 bundle. His pursuit got as far as a Chicago legal office, where well-paid lawyers said that winning such a suit would involve battling more well-paid lawyers. Atmar had to park the community's pursuit vehicle.

The Post article said the next step in the evolution of US law will be to determine if digital products can be sold with an ownership that protects the maker's rights forever. Since the matter in the Supreme Court covered digital parts for a computer peripheral, the writer must mean digital products which don't have a physical form. Software comes to mind.

Every vendor except one in the 3000 ecosystem shouldn't worry. No one but the system maker who builds an OS has ever tied software to physical hardware to make the former the guardian of the latter. Software companies which offer virtualizations of systems utilitize the best available licenses to make emulators legal. Now the rules about ownership status and rights are changing, thanks to a Court that's not always been on the side of the little guy.

The little guys who own HP's 3000 iron have been told they need an HP license of MPE/iX to boot their systems. It's also true for virtualized systems. If those products sold to customers — HP's iron, the virtualization software — are untied from HP Enterprise concerns, pricing might change. Even more importantly for the future, modifications might flow into the key components of a 3000's software, if a court rules that modding up your software doesn't break patent protections.

Source code is inside the community that would make that modding possible, but it's been tied to a license that prohibits using the source for anything but support of customers. That's why any changes to CALENDAR needed at the end of 2027 must be applied customer-by-customer. Releasing an MPE/iX 8.0 isn't permitted under today's law. If those HP licenses were ruled illegal, it could change the future of owning a 3000—perhaps because for the first time, a customer could truly own the box, instead of paying a fee to license the software essential to making a 3000 compute.

May 26, 2017

Friday Fine-Tune: Tape to Disk, Posix time fix

Editor's Note: Monday is the Memorial Day holiday here in the Newswire's office. We'll be back with a new article on May 31. With every day that passes, HP's original hardware gets older and more likely to fail. Virtualization of hardware brings newer hardware into service with 3000s and helps with this problem, a risk that's greatest on the 3000's moving components. Especially tape drives like the C1539 above; even HP's discs are less likely to fail. Enjoy this advice on how to put stored data from tape into a store-to-disk file, as well as keeping dates accurate in MPE/iX's Posix name space.

I have some information on a tape. How do I create a store to disc file with it?

There are a few solutions. The first and easiest is to simply restore the info to a system (RESTORE *T;/;SHOW;CREATE;ACCOUNT=WORKSTOR) where WORKSTOR is an account you create to pull the data in. Then a simple FILE D=REGSFILE;DEV=DISC and STORE /WORKSTOR/;*D;whatever else should create the disc store.

The second is to use FCOPY. The STORE format is FILE TAPEIN;DEV=TAPE;REC=8192,,U,BINARY.

John Pitman adds, "If you mean copy it off tape to disk store file, I’m not sure if that can be done. In my experience with tapes, there is a file mark between files, and EOT is signified by multiple file marks in a row. But it may be possible. If you do a file equate and FCOPY as shown below, you should be able to look at the raw data, and it should show separate files, after a file list at the front.

FILE TX;DEV=TAPE;REC=32767FCOPYFROM=*TX;TO=;CHAR;FILES=ALL

Here is our current store command, and the message it provokes. MAXTAPEBUF speeds it up somewhat

STORE !INSTOREX.NEW.STOCK2K;*DDS777;FILES=100000;DIRECTORY;MAXTAPEBUF

Why is the date/time in the Posix shell way off from the time on MPE, and what can be done to fix it? It’s over three weeks off.

Homesteading Editor Gilles Schipper replies:

First, check to ensure your timezone offset is correct and there are no pending time clock changes.

May 24, 2017

2028 roadblock might be evaded site by site

After sizing up the lifespan prospect for MPE/iX apps, the forthcoming failure of date handling looms large. CALENDAR, which is intrinsic to identifying the correct date of a transaction, stops working at the end of 2027. HP chose a 57-year lifespan for MPE when it fell back to making a 16-bit 3000, way back at the start of the 1970s. Loose talk about fixing this problem has bumped around the community for years.

Now there's someone who believes there's a way to make MPE/iX a 2028 resource and beyond. It's got to be done site by site, though.

"At the moment, I suspect changes to handle 2027 problems are likely to be site-specific," said Stan Sieler of Allegro, "depending upon their applications."

"A range of possible options exist," he adds. "They're complicated by the likelihood that some software has roll-your-own build a CALENDAR format date code." Erasing this roadblock could make specialized in-house apps immortal. The software doesn't need to rely on HP's hardware anymore. Stromasys and its Charon emulator have enabled that.

Allegro owns an MPE/iX site code license, as does Pivital Solutions and a few other companies. Allegro's Sieler and Steve Cooper also have experience developing MPE internals for HP. The algorithm isn't that complex, but installing such a software fix will be done customer by customer.

I suspect in many cases," Sieler said, "the most effective approach would be to roll back the system date by some multiple of 14 years, and then intercept some input, and some output, changing data as needed. For example, if a user wants to enter 10/15/2030, that might get changed to be 10/15/1974 (using a 56 year offset), and output of the form 1/2/1995 would be changed to 1/2/2031, and output of the form 1/2/95 to 1/2/31).

Sieler said the company is ready to help customers with the problem, even though it won't stop anything until 2027's last day.

"We pioneered Y2K testing and remediation for both HP, (on MPE and HP-UX), and our customers," he added, "and we pioneered checking (not enforcing) computer security (our EnGarde preceded VEAudit)." VEAudit is a Vesoft product. That company's founder Vladimir Volokh has weighed in on 2028 in years past. Like many MPE advocates, he's been hopeful.

In an era where Amiga games can be played on iPhones -- and companies now earn money for such a creation -- it's easy to say we don't know who will break this 2028 barrier. Anyone with MPE/iX source code and customer initiative and a full-service approach is a candidate to provide a route around the roadblock.

The best news is that I'll only be 70 when this happens, so I'll be around to watch the magic.

May 17, 2017

Beyond emulations might lie migrations

As another webinar demo unspooled today for HP 3000 data migration products, the strategy of hold on or move onward demoed another facet. A 3000 might be a candidate for de-commissioning simply because the system has been too successful in the past. The next server will be different, but there's no guarantee the replacement will be better in significant aspects. Waiting for something better is not as easy as moving to something different.

Take COBOL compilers, for example. At the investment firm Fayez Sarofim, the HP 3000 was being evaluated for replacement. One element of the eval was finding a COBOL compiler compatible with the code running on the 3000. The company had to choose a way forward that was mostly different. Better was another phase.

"We chose AcuCOBOL over Micro Focus at the time of our migration because AcuCOBOL better handled the packed HP Floating Point without losing significant decimals," said George Willis. "It also had a more powerful set of debugging tools that were easy to use." Protecting decimal data was the priority. Getting a superior debugger was the improvement.

Time moved onward for the Sarofim strategy though, shifting away from apps and toward software services (SaaS). HP's Unix systems—an HP-UX 4466 Rx using AMXW, Cognos, Micro Focus COBOL, Suprtool and Warehouse—eventually got the boot, just like a 3000 did. The shift to services erased a department at the company. There's no emulation that can oppose that kind of sea change in strategy: "We don't even need our own servers, we'll access an app instead."

While making its move to HP's Unix, Willis said "We did not want to go through another riskier migration until we were stabilized. We are certainly stable now, but the firm has decided to move a different direction." So onward it went to SaaS. Emulation never got a fighting chance.

There are other places where emulation gets its shot. Once in awhile it comes up short, even after yeoman work to fit the performance needs. Veritiv Corp. runs four of the largest HP 3000s, N-Class servers loaded with RAM and HP's fastest PA-RISC processors. This profile of user needs to believe that emulation is a good long-term goal. Hardware for this top-end N-Class level emulation must be specified with an eye to a long-term play. Value for money gets amplified when you're replacing HP's 3000 hardware for a long run on an emulator. "We don't need to ignore the issue of hardware," said Randy Stanfield this week, while investigating migration partners. "We need to put together a better long term plan than staying on the HP 3000 for more than 10 years."

That's searching for something different, that talk of needing to be off the system before MPE/iX stops date-keeping in 2028. Ten-plus years is a long time, enough to enable the magic of making CALENDAR work in 2028 a reality, perhaps. It's not impossible, although someone has to do the work to salvage MPE's date capability for 2028 use.

The silver lining for the 3000 community in any migration story is that the business often goes to a vendor who's been in the market a long time. MB Foster is one player like that, demonstrating its roots with a demo like today's of UDACentral. MB Foster celebrated its 40th anniversary in the 3000 market this week. 'The HP3000 market is our home market," Birket Foster said in an email today, "and we are grateful for the support, suggestions and collaboration with us."

Stanfield is looking for customer stories about migrating with Fresche Legacy, which earned its 3000 reputation as Speedware.

1. What system did you convert to (Unix/Windows/Linux)?2. What system did you convert from(HP3000 A-class/N-class?) and how busy was the system? Number of users? 3. Are you still running that system? 4. Did you convert to using the Eloquence DB?5. Performance after conversion: good or bad?6. Any Do's or Don't's?7. Primary Code base (Speedware/Powerhouse/Cobol/Fortran)? Amount of code converted?

May 15, 2017

3000 Cloud Doings: Are, Might, and Never

The latest news about cloud computing for HP 3000s came from Stromasys. The company selling the Charon virtualizer (many think of it as an emulator) announced a new bundled offer as well as announcing that any public cloud can run Charon. Sites that employ the Oracle Cloud to host their virtualization systems get un-metered cloud services as part of that deal with Stromasys. Oracle Cloud is one of the newer players in the cloud market. There's no place to go but up in market share for Oracle Cloud, carving out its business among providers dominated by Amazon's Web Services.

Emulating HP 3000 servers, however, is a job that's not often suited for a shared Intel-based server. There are exceptions, like light-duty 3000s or those in archival mode. Those are the best profiles for 3000s in the cloud running Charon, according to the Stromasys HP Product Manager Doug Smith. 3000 A-Class systems — Stromasys calls this Charon model the A520 — can be run from the cloud.

Many of the cloud's typical servers make memory and CPUs available on an as-needed basis, swapping processor power and RAM in and out. This is in contrast to dedicating a highly-threaded CPU and all available memory to a task like emulation. "Charon requires dedicated resources," Smith said. "If I say I need a 3.5 GHz CPU response, then I need that 3.5 GHz in the host itself, not being shared among other virtual machines."

It's safe to say there are 3000s in our community that are good candidates for a cloud profile. A-Class systems running the one last MPE application, some app still critical to a datacenter, for example. Better to have this sort of foolproof hardware service chain using virtualization, instead of stocking redundant 3000 memory sticks. (The better option to stay with the 3000 hardware from HP is an independent support company.)

The cloud — a term that doesn't have much traction for classic 3000 pros like Smith — might evolve to the point where dedicated CPU performance at any level could become affordable. Not even Hewlett-Packard knew how to price and sell its HP Cloud so its Unix customers could host datacenters in the cloud. Integrity chips were the next generation of PA-RISC, so emulating any chipset with that pedigree is no small matter. Smith, like any other analyst in IT, considers dedicated performance from a public cloud as cost-prohibitive.

Any company can arrange to use an offsite, networked host for MPE/iX apps. This seems more like timesharing to the 3000 pros than Infrastructure as a Service. Cloud computing is supposed to reduce costs, and it does so by sharing resources. Sharing is not a great match for emulation at multiple levels. When you use a VMware host to create the Linux cradle on one level, which then virtualizes PA-RISC with Charon, that's a more intense CPU requirement than public clouds can handle. Pull out the VMware and you're fine for a smaller datacenter.

Cloud computing users definitely are shifting their expenditures from capital expenses to operating expenses. OpEx can be easier to place in a budget than CapEx, especially for legacy systems like the 3000. We'll never see a day when there's no more CapEx spending in datacenters like those in the 3000 world. OpEx is on the rise, but like the Paperless Office of the 1980s strategies, CapEx will always have some benefits. One is the constantly dropping cost of HP's hardware, if you can arrange for enough backup components and parts.

OpEx, however, gives vendors and customers a way to tune up a services agreement. At Stromasys, for example, the Oracle Cloud already has advantages for some Charon users. "There is definitely, for example, an added benefit for [Sun Sparc] SSP users," said Marketing Director Sarah Hoysa. "By emulating their SPARC instances on Oracle Cloud, they have an additional way of continuing their close relationship with Oracle."

"The big thing is that customers now have a lot of choice," Hoysa added. "We know people are moving to a wide range of public clouds. We're making our solution on all of those public clouds." Dave Clements of Stromasys said the company's got an insurance firm running Charon in the Microsoft's Azure cloud, for example. It's not a 3000 site. The cloud is all potential for 3000s today.

There are all the software and license arrangements needed to put a 3000 onto any of those public clouds using Charon. Stromasys went to a software-based licensing arrangement two years ago, so the need for a USB stick with HPSUSAN data has been swept aside. The 3000 customers using N-Class systems might have an interest in cloud computing in the future. For now, however, Smith said the security, control, and command of on-premise hardware is preferred by larger manufacturers. The interest has been from smaller manufacturing companies.

It's safe to say—given the competition for customers among a growing rank of cloud companies, we will never see a future with zero HP 3000 cloud computers. It's coming, and companies like Oracle will drive down pricing in ways we've never imagined. The 3000 datacenters will hang on long enough to see that day, because you can never say never when it comes to failures of hardware that's 14 years old and aging.

May 12, 2017

How to Step Through a CSLT Reinstall

Assume you've seen your Series 918 crash to its bones. You replace the 3000 and need to reinstall from CSLT. Many a 3000 site hasn't done this in a long time. This is when you're getting in touch with your independent support company for advice and walking the steps to recovery.

Oh. You don't have a support company to call. One more thing that's been dropped from the budget. You could ask on the 3000 newsgroup for help, so long as your downtime isn't serious. This support strategy is one way to go, and James Byrne got lucky this week. One expert walked him through the critical steps.

"I am working my way through the check-lists for reinstalling from a CSLT," Byrne said, "and I have come to the conclusion this stuff was written more to obscure than to illuminate." The HP documentation advised him to boot from disk, something he couldn't do. "Fortunately this is a backup 3000, and nothing too bad can happen yet."

Gilles Schipper, our esteemed homesteading contributor, provided the answers. The problem lay in a bad boot drive, but how do you discover that's true? We'll get to that in a bit. First, the CSLT reinstall.

Modify step 6 to read as follows:6. Use VOLUTIL to add additional discs to MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET, as well as any additional user volumesets that you have.The approprite VOLUTIL commands you will need are:1. NEWVOL command to add additional volumes to the existing MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET2. NEWSET command to add first (master) volume of user-volumeset1, say3. NEWVOL command to add additional volumes to user-volumeset14. repeat 2 and 3 for each additional user volumeset

Then, prior to step 7, add step 6A, which is the repeat of step 5, which is to AGAIN restore the directories from the tape containing the directories so that they are restored to the master volumes of their respective user volumesets.

And then step 7 remains as before.

The bad LDEV1 discovery? You can always swap out a known good drive. Byrne did this and noted he had to restock his cache of backup drives. "Only three left," he said. "Time to order more, perhaps." Advice on checking for bad drives before a boot:

"Instead of INSTALL, type ODE," Schipper said. "Then run Mapper. That should show you all of your devices including hard drives. Although that may even show drives that cannot be INSTALL'ed to. Also, check all of your SCSI terminators."

Stan Sieler added this to the remedies for a bad disk. "Try doing:

start norecovery message

"That 'message' option will cause 'start' to generate a **LOT** of output. Hopefully, the last few dozen lines might provide a clue to the problem."

Do all the backup that you need when protecting that HP 3000. The success of its backups falls in the lap of the system's managers. (Running CHECKSLT from the TELESUP account will verify if a CSLT is still good enough to boot your system. You'll want to check that CSLT to ensure it'll run on any tape drive, not just the one it usually runs on. Alignment issues kick DDS drives out of service regularly.) Don't forget about keeping your CSLT healthy.

May 08, 2017

Turnkey cloud services mirror 3000 roots

Re-hosting HP 3000 applications keeps getting less complex. Managers who homestead once had to locate an HP 3000 which had similar specs, one that could preserve their application license levels. Because it was an HP box, their auditors wanted them to execute an MPE license transfer with HP. More paperwork, like finding a 20-year-old bill of sale.

When Stromasys virtualization showed up, the mandate for specialized MPE Hewlett-Packard servers fell out of the equation. Configuration was still required, though, sometimes because the Intel servers in the strategy were already otherwise engaged in a customer’s datacenter.

In each of those formulas, companies continue their local management of hardware, storage and networking. It’s an On Premises choice, called On Prem in some planning sessions. Cloud computing is the opposite of On Prem. It is changing the need for hardware in the datacenter. The strategy now has an official role in virtualized 3000 practices.

Charon has been ready for the cloud for several years. The new element is a packaged set of software, support services, and provisioned cloud computing without a meter for usage. Director of HP 3000 Business Development Doug Smith at Stromasys said the cloud equation best fits archival installations and smaller, A-Class-grade production shops.

Extending offsite strategies

Stromasys completed testing for its cloud-based Charon in November of 2014. During the next year the company took an agnostic approach to cloud hosting. Whatever service a customer preferred was worked into Charon installations. Stromasys would also recommend a provider.

The newest formula is an end-to-end bundle that includes unlimited cloud capacity, making it more like a turnkey, locally-provisioned MPE/iX host. HP 3000 customers liked turnkey datacenters. Find a customer from the 1980s and the 1990s and you’ll uncover a manager who wanted more homogenous computing. Virtualization in the cloud is a way to release On Prem operations to trusted third parties.

The unmetered option for Charon on the cloud comes in the Oracle Cloud offering. The more dug-in suppliers of cloud Infrastructure as a Service require customers to manage separate billing, usage rate metering and support. A company looking to migrate off HP’s 3000 hardware might have existing relationships with Amazon Web Services, or Azure or Datapipe or Rackspace. All of these will work with Charon HPA.

The novelty of Oracle Cloud plus Charon is its turnkey nature. Turnkey has a resonance with the 3000 customer, especially those who found that heterogeneous IT had downsides. The required amount of management increased as IT got more heterogeneous.

Most 3000 sites have lean management resources. Getting a single-call arrangement for legacy apps and hosting, while being able to leave On Prem behind, should interest some sites. Especially those who might be finding that even a DR-status 3000, powered down for many years while it keeps the MPE apps available, is a strategy with measurable risks.

May 05, 2017

Newer 3000s come at low cost vs. downtime

Earlier this week a 3000 site worked through a system halt by replacing Series 918 memory sticks. Ultimately the problem was resolved with newer memory, but a full replacement of the server might have been just as easily obtained. The relative performance of 3000s sold across the years becomes a factor in this sort of support equation. A manager might find themselves poring over a chart like the one at left (click for details of the A-Class comparisons to older 3000s.)

HP was never much motivated to benchmark its 3000 line against the rest of the world's business servers. However, customers about to upgrade were able to define the relationship between the boxes in the lineup. HP used a 1.3 HP 3000 Performance Unit rating for its Series 42 HP 3000 classics, the pre-RISC range of models before MPE/XL. Most customers consider a Series 917 to be the bottom of the PA-RISC line, and that server earns a Performance Unit score of 10.

The tables and rating sheets were printed by HP until 2004. For example, here's one of the last, a page from the HP e3000 Business Servers Configuration Guide. The ultimate generation A-Class servers start at a 17 and make their way up to an 84. The N-Class computers start at 100 and build up to 768. In general, an A-Class with a 200 at its model tail end will be faster than what is being replaced from anything that's not an A- or N-Class.

Even in 2017, these numbers can matter. A Series 918 will be approaching age 23 by now, first manufactured in 1994. An A-Class server is at most 15 years old. Replacing 9x8s with A-Class servers can be a way to delay replacing HP's 3000 gear altogether. Rejuvenation like this is not a long-term solution, but a manager might be in between the rock of aging iron and the hard place of frozen software licenses.

Used A-Class or N-Class servers can add reliability for customers who must homestead. Even the ones selling for $2,000 are a lower cost to avoid downtime than a search for 25-year-old memory components.

The numbers in HP's Relative Performance Chart are more than just a reflection of the model numbers. A Series 928, for example, is less powerful than a Series 918. HP explained the methodology. "Performance Relative to HP e3000 Performance Unit" is a general guideline for OLTP performance, since the factors influencing an application's performance vary widely."

AICS Research, the software company that developed the QueryCalc 3000 app and the QCTerm freeware terminal emulator, created the most direct comparison tool back in the middle of the 2000s. Even though AICS has closed its website, the data lives on across the 3000 universe's webpages. 3k Ranger owner Keven Miller posted a link to his copy of the AICS data.

What HP's 3000 performance rating means can be debated. At HP World in 2002, HP announced the final new 3000 systems, all based upon the PA-8700 processors. At the high end HP announced a new N-Class system based upon the 750 MHz PA-8700 processor. The new N4000-400-750 was the first HP e3000 to achieve an MPE/iX Relative Performance Units (MRPU) rating of 100; the Series 918 has an MRPU of 1.

HP contends that the MRPU is the only valid way to measure the relative performance of MPE systems. In particular, they maintain that the MHz rating is not a valid measure of relative performance, though they continued to use virtual MHz numbers for systems with software-crippled processors. For example, there are no 380 MHz or 500 MHz PA-RISC processors. Unfortunately, the MRPU does not allow for the comparison of the HP e3000 with other HP systems, even the HP 9000s and Integrity servers.

HP has changed the way it rates systems three times over the life of the HP 3000. During the middle years, the Series 918 was the standard with a rating of 1. In 1998, HP devised a new measurement standard for the systems it was introducing that no longer had the Series 918 at 1. It is under this new system that the N4000-400-750 is rated at 100. Applying a correction factor, AICS Research has rated the N4000-400-750 at 76.8 relative to the Series 918’s rating of 1.

May 03, 2017

More than ever, old sticks trigger backups

Regular and frequent backups still hold their spot as keystones in a stable HP 3000 datacenter. The backups are even more essential this year. 2017 is the 14th year and counting since any HP 3000 components have been manufactured. Excepting some third party disk solutions, the average age of Hewlett-Packard's MPE/iX servers has more than doubled since HP stopped building the boxes in 2003.

In 2003 a manager might be daring enough to run a shop with a server built in 1991, the first year the 9x7 servers were manufactured. Systems in the first wave of PA-RISC design were still in service, but a Series 950 was a rare box by the time HP stopped building them. That oldest 3000 server at the time was still only 15 years old. That made the average age of a 3000 about 8-10 years.

Add 14 years to that lifespan and it's easy to locate a 3000 and its components which are more than 16 years old. The Series 9x8 systems turn 25 this year. The numbers came up in a recent emergency repair discussion out in public. A Series 918 at Harte & Lyne ground to a halt with a bad memory component, and even a pair of replacement sticks were duds on this 23-year-old system. The 918-928 servers are still among the most frequently used servers in the community.

The manager at Harte & Lyne keeps this hardware high-wire act going because of Powerhouse licensing problems. The repairs of his 918 coincided with very recent backups, but it could have been up to 30 days behind. Loss of company data was well within reach at this logistics company. The backups prevented the calamity that's now started to hit spare parts, too.

Two failed memory sticks, plus two replacement failures, triggered the system halt. The problem was a defective card.

"I am doing a full backup just in case," said James Byrne, "but as it happens we did our monthly CSLT and SYSINFO jobs yesterday. Once the new backup is complete I will add two more sticks and see if they work, and repeat until we encounter the problem of getting the memory cage filled."

Byrne has access to independent support for his 918, but used the 3000-L to diagnose the problem at first. "One of the two replacement cards I initially used was also defective," he reported after he got the 3000 back online. "It took some time for our support people from Commerx and myself to finally realize what was going on, as we pulled cards and swapped locations trying to get a full bank of memory reinstalled."

Fortunately I still have about six two-card sets kept in a vault as spares, together with sundry other spare parts. No doubt there are other duds lurking therein but now I am alive to the possibility. Thanks for all the help.

And yes, the reason for all this dancing around to keep a 23 year-old piece of hardware running is Powerhouse and the intransigent present owners of the 'Intellectual Property Rights' thereto. To describe these people and their representatives as unethical grants them too much dignity for what they are. And what they are I shall leave unsaid.

These aging 3000 servers sometimes have been retired out of production duty, serving out their remaining days in archival mode. But even archives must be updated from time to time. Production data demands a more serious backup regimen, one getting more serious every year.

Solutions to avoid this risk run a wide gamut. Migration onto other environments reduces the age of replacement parts. A stout support contract for MPE/iX hardware ensures component replacement. Good backups are still crucial there. Beyond these remedies, there's one way to get newer hardware without migrating. PA-RISC virtualization software doesn't make backups an optional task. It can make them less likely to be needed, though.

May 01, 2017

No obit for your OS, but not so for hardware

There's a new documentary in theaters about writing obituaries. The film Obit covers the work of obituary writers at the New York Times. No matter how you feel about mainstream media, the Times is one of just a handful of media outlets still telling stories about the lives of people who've just died. Obits were part of my reporting tasks when I broke into journalism, but I never wrote anything about someone famous while I worked at the Williamson County Sun. My very next job was Editor of the HP Chronicle, where people were famous within a modest community. I didn't write an obit at the Chronicle. I was eight years into the work at the Newswire when Danny Compton, a co-founder of ROC Software, died so very young at 40.

Compton and his wife Wendy were fun and important to reviving the Maestro user community. Why care about them now, you might ask, or even a legend like Fred White, whose life story I wrote up when he died in 2014? An obit is written for a death of something material, a person with a body, or an object which can be scrapped or destroyed. Something of value which made a mark on the world. The years continue to pull out HP's 3000's hardware from service. No one's making new gear with PA-RISC chips. Someday nearly everything that's an HP 3000 will go to dust.

The same cannot be said about MPE/iX. An obituary of the OS might be hard to prepare. The demise of HP's hardware could be written in advance. Advance obits, sitting up on the cloud by now, are a practice of those obit journalists. Obit writing tells about a life, not a death. Even as a celebrity continues to celebrate birthdays, their clock is ticking. Maybe that MPE/iX demise is in 2028. It's easier to see an obit arriving earlier for HP's hardware, though. It might read HP 3000, durable business server, dies at 51.

Hewlett-Packard's HP 3000, the first minicomputer which included a database wired into a file system, passed away on November 14, 2023 when the last CPU board failed to boot the server's operating system. The hardware, whose design was revised from the heyday of mainframes through the boom of the Web economy, carried commerce and data among entities as varied as aerospace makers and police departments. It is survived by the software written for the MPE/iX operating system as well as the database IMAGE/SQL.

HP's 3000 gear grew from a system that demanded raised flooring and specialized cooling to systems that could be carried under an arm. The hardware once read data from paper tapes and gained its ultimate IO abilities processing Internet data from standardized networks.

The obit for MPE/iX will be harder to write in advance. The OS is still going places.

The inability to know what day it is won't keep a painter from rendering visions, for example. In the same way a calendar will help that artist, some unforeseen code can give the OS a life that could outlast our own. The reason anyone would want to cut and test such code is virtualization.

Plenty of the surviving HP 3000 shops are in archival mode now. The low-processing needs of archival fit the glove of cloud computing. MPE/iX is a vessel to carry the ideas of application software. Like a ship's hull that can be cared for across generations, your OS has been a vessel that's gained a second generation with virtualization. Putting that virtualized hardware into the cloud lets the light-duty of archiving stay on course.

April 28, 2017

Friday Fine-tune: directories and tombstones

A 3000 manager wanted to know about adjusting privileges on their server. When the community's veterans started to respond, extra information rose up. Some of was about the management of files in MPE/iX, the kind of legacy recorded on what's known as a tombstone.

Tombstones are data used to solve 3000 problems and establish file access. HP says in its manual for programming in MPE/iX that "It's frequently necessary to obtain status information on a file to determine the cause of an error." A File Information Display is frequently called a tombstone, providing:

Actual physical and operational file characteristics.

Current file information, pertaining to end of file, record pointer, and logical and physical transfer count. Information on the last error for the file and the last HPFOPEN or FOPEN error.

When a file is opened, the final characteristics may be different from those originally requested because of defaults, overrides, :FILE commands, and the file label.

You can use the PRINTFILEINFO intrinsic to print a tombstone. It requires that you specify the file number returned when the file is opened by HPFOPEN or FOPEN. The tombstone can display either a full or short format. If the file is open, it provides a full display. Otherwise, it provides a short display. Calling this intrinsic does not automatically abort the program.

You can call the PRINTFILEINFO intrinsic from programs written in COBOL II/XL and HP FORTRAN 77/iX. When calling from COBOL II/XL, use the FD filename. You can call the name PRINTFILEINFO directly from HP FORTRAN 77/iX programs. You can obtain the required file number by using the FNUM intrinsic.

Tombstones came up after one list member resurrected an answer about privileges from a 11-year-old post. Ray Shahan, still managing archival systems for Republic Title of Texas, heard his name in discussion about TD and RD privileges and how to control them. He quipped about not being heard from in ages.

"I have been asked by our security group to remove TD and RD privileges from our HP 3000," Reggie Monroe wrote this week. "These are for Reading and Traversing Directories. Does anyone know what the impact of this would be, if any?"

Tracy Johnson replied that "Unless your users have access to Posix files, you can categorically state you don't have any to remove."

There is an old comp.sys.hp.mpe posting where Ray Shahan wants to add TD and RD privileges. Just do the opposite, though that may be a bad thing if applied to MPE groups and accounts treated as directories.

The advice from the 2005 discussion included using Posix to enable "execute" permissions on all directories needed to get to the directory you want. So the opposite would be to disable those permissions. The ALTSEC command does this.The process will also include adding ACDs to the directory.

ACDs are ordered lists of pairs.The pairs are made up of access permissions and user specifications that control access to objects. Objects are passive entities that contain or receive information, such as files, directories, and devices. Each entry in the ACD specifies object access permissions granted to a specific user or group of users. In addition to being granted access to an object protected by an ACD, users can also be granted access to read the ACD itself.

ACDs can be applied to any MPE/iX files using the ALTSEC command. This command was enhanced to support directories. If a file has an ACD, this method of specifying access to the file takes precedence over other security features, such as lockwords and the file access matrix. ACDs cannot be placed on root, account, group, or directories.

April 26, 2017

Wayback Wed: Doing the Beta patch Samba

In April of HP's 2006, the company was exhorting its customers to use the 3000 improvements built by the vendor. Near the top of that list was the latest Samba, the printer and file sharing open source software that made it easy for 3000s to connect to Windows servers and resources. The latest version was 3.0.22, delivered to the world in the same year as the Samba community began to use it. The snag for a 3000 user: the official patch was only available to customers that year with an HP support contract.

The issue remained a troubling one that HP settled by the end of its 3000 business. Beta patches with improvements like SCSI Pass Thru and Samba eventually got unfettered distribution, even through they never passed the tests needed for General Release status. Today, the best way to get any HP 3000 patch is to use the guidance of an independent support company. We never tire of reminding readers that Pivital Solutions is an all-3000 provider, an official reseller of 3000s until HP closed that business, and one of seven holders of an MPE/iX source code license. It's a unique combination.

HP improved the 3000 and repaired bugs with a patch process that included alpha and beta testing before going into general release to customers. General Release status was important, because until HP's code was GR'd no one could get it but HP support customers. That was a wide gap in coverage. By 2006 the majority of the 3000 world was getting support from the independent companies which serve the community today. Alpha testing happened inside HP, and beta happened in the customer shops where a test machine was available. As the 3000's futures dwindled inside HP, though, the beta testers became harder to recruit. Customers usually took on patches in a PowerPatch collection. One was being prepared for the ultimate MPE/iX 7.5 release during April, 2006.

The announcement of a PowerPatch deadline was a routine message from HP's 3000 lab. The messages asked customers to pick up what they'd ordered though the Systems Improvement Ballot. "There are more than 30 beta-test patches still not qualified to be included in the PowerPatch. Tests of PowerPatches must be completed by customers on HP support. The 7.5 patches can only be tested on a subset of the 3000 installed base: any server released before the 9x8 systems won't be able to test anything created for 7.5."

HP lab liaison Jeff Vance told the user community, "If you voted for one of the many SIB items which are stuck in beta-test, waiting to become GR patches, and have not requested any of these patches, please do so ASAP. It really doesn’t do the user community much good to have a bunch of MPE enhancements stuck in beta-test, maybe never to see the light of day."

Customers' devotion to stability kept the beta test improvements in the dark. Changes to a 3000 became harder to justify on a stable, version-frozen server. Samba 3.0.22 was ported by HP for all three supported OS versions of that year, from 6.5 through 7.5. It was the final Samba version developed through HP's labs, a significant one since Samba gained the ability to join Active Directory as a member, though not as a domain controller. Samba was one of the first advances for 3000s resulting from Posix standards for MPE -- developments that earned the OS its /iX name.

As HP closed down the MPE/iX labs, concerns rose about beta-test enhancements like a current Samba disappearing for customer use. A beta patch that never made it to General Release might be unavailable once HP's support contracts ended. The vendor came through with a plan to make the beta patches available to the world: ask HP support for what you'd like by name. Samba 3.0.22 was dubbed SMBMXY6F, for example.

The patched MPE/iX code itself remains inside HP Enterprise, but HP 3000 customers enjoy a unique place in HP's support world. A current HP support contract isn't required to get the code. It's a dance, to be sure, that a customer must do with HP support—but at least now that HP's been divided into Enterprise and Printer companies, the 3000 questions don't get confused with HP printers using the same number.

Samba is still being enhanced and secured today, 20 years after it was first launched by Australian developers who linked servers to Windows machines. Samba is included with most Linux distros and enjoys one of the widest deployments among open source solutions. Getting the 3000 onto a secure, up to date Samba in 2006 was a sign that HP's lab was still at work in a year the 3000 was supposed to be hitting its end of life.

Samba 3.0.22 fell off of open source community support in 2009 when the whole 3.x.x family of Samba was retired. A significant security bug showed up by 3.6.3 that allowed anonymous users to gain root access to a system from an anonymous connection, through the exploitation of an error in Samba's remote procedure call. The HP 3000 often was immune to such exploits since it didn't have an OS structure like that of Unix.

April 24, 2017

On the Surprises Of Six Decades

I never expected to be doing this on the day that I turned 60. That's today. I joined the world of the HP 3000 when I was 27. I worked out my earliest articles about MPE (there was no iX) on a Kaypro II like the one depicted at right. Yes, that phone there was state of the art, too. I came hungry to write about PCs and Macs and figured the minicomputer beat would be a starting spot. This has become the destination, the world we love together.

In my late 20s I gave little thought to what my job would be by the time I got old enough to buy Senior tickets at the movies. I'm a journalist, so I think about the future more than some fellows, though. I had no vision about reporting about a minicomputer when I turned 60. Like you, I never believed I'd be doing this for so long. More than half my life, I've typed the letters MPE together. My life has been blessed, both with the rich array of people whose stories I get to tell, as well as the sponsors who support this life's work. I am thankful for both.

But here we all are, faithful to work that is rich and comforting, steeped in the knowledge that the 3000 is nearly 45 years old. Just at midlife, perhaps, at least in the measurement of a man. I'm entering my third act, I like to say. Friends are close at hand in my life and I continue to create with words and ideas. My dreams are realized and something I'll never retire from. Perhaps that's true for you as well. The 3000 was supposed to be rubbish by now. Instead, people still want to buy HP's software for it.

I'm here for the surprises like that. Survival is success earned across years and through uncertainty and crisis. Your support of that survival is a point of pride. We all earned our latest act. Enjoy the role you are playing, making way for the future.

On Saturday my bride and publisher Abby cooked up a party for me, a total surprise. It was the first surprise party of my life. Sometimes the universe gives us surprises. When we're lucky, the surprises are enduring and continue to reward our faith and hope. The love, ah, that flows on its own, propelled by our lives together.

April 19, 2017

Where will HP even take 3000 money today?

Companies want to do the right thing, even while they're keeping their budgets in order. When a customer of the 3000-only support shop Pivital Solutions needed to add Netbase/iX to their server, it was time to find the correct way of doing that. The customer didn't have a license for the HP software needed to power Netbase.

HP once sold such a thing. More accurately, HP's distributors sold licenses for this subsystem software. The most common purchase was TurboStore, but items like a COBOL II compiler and odd ducks like Business Report Writer and Allbase 4GL were on HP's price list. Now it looks like there's no longer a list, and scarcely anyone left to take a check.

Pivital's Steve Suraci was resolute about serving his customer with integrity. It might've been a lot easier for a 3000 vendor to just load a subsystem onto a server that HP stopped supporting more than six years ago. Some customers need to satisfy license requirements on everything, though. Getting a license meant finding a reseller or someplace inside HP Enterprise to send the check. Media for subsystem software on the 3000 doesn't ship from HPE by now. This would be a license-only transaction. But where was the cash box?

After Suraci reached out to me, I touched base with people in the 3000 world who might still need a contact to purchase MPE/iX software from HPE. The first wave of requests came back stumped to identify who'd be running the 3000 store anymore. A trip to the website for Client Systems, the final 3000 distributor in North America, draws a couple of parking pages for domains. The OpenMPE advocates planned for many things in the eight years they worked with HP. A missing HP pay station was not among those plans.

"We don't know the answer to this one," said Terry Floyd of The Support Group. "We didn't think HP sold software for the HP 3000 anymore." He reached for some tongue in cheek humor. "Maybe install it and see if they sue — then you'll know who to pay? I'm glad I don't have this problem."

Donna Hofmeister, a director on OpenMPE through most of its existence, was surprised as well.

"Wow. OpenMPE never thought of this particular wrinkle -- what to do if the authorized reseller goes out of business," she said. "I'm not sure if there's anyone (like [former business manager] Jennie Hou) still with HPE who could help. It might be that the best thing to do is to buy a system that the add-on software is already licensed for."

That might be a good strategy in some simple cases, but a transfer of that license to another 3000's hardware might be missing software that was on the target machine already. You'd need a clone license. Even though there are oodles of 3000s out there, finding a clone -- or even a basic FOS lineup, plus one subsystem -- could be tough.

We checked in with Ray Legault at Boeing, and the manager of the MPE operations there said if the 3000 were at Boeing, he'd "have to let the Computer Science Corp. SAs perform the work." Software upgrades are not usually within the reach of hardware support companies, through. For example, the 3000 service at Blueline doesn't include hardware sales "for quite some time," said Bill Towe. "Our only involvement in the HP 3000 is supporting existing hardware and the OS."

Faced with a shrunken HP ecosystem and a vendor whose only operations look like they're limited to taking the $500 to transfer a license, Suraci took a chance on a phone number in his email files. Like a few of us, he's got archives that go back to the glory days when Client Systems was a going concern, full of fire to host the 3KWorld website and sell used hardware. Suraci found a phone number for Casey Crellin, one of the last people left when the doors were wide open at Client Systems.

A phone call off an old email turned up Crellin, who gave Suraci an email address to continue the conversation. It's uncertain where license money collected for 3000 subsystem products would end up. At one point not so long ago — okay, it was eight years — OpenMPE wanted to help HP take money on such sales.

It's not a surprise Suraci needed to do the right thing. His company was one of the last that gained official HP reseller status before Hewlett-Packard clamped off the futures for the 3000. It's a testament to Pivital's persistence that the place to do the correct thing was under the rocks Suraci kept turning over. Due diligence and integrity are behind finding someone to accept 3000 subsystem license money in 2017. Companies that need t's crossed and i's dotted know where to go.

April 17, 2017

3000 Community Meets Up on LinkedIn

More than 660 HP 3000 veterans, pros, and wizards emeritus are members of the only 3000 group on LinkedIn. Last week a message from 3000 vendor and group organizer Dave Wiseman invited them all to meet in the Bay Area in the first week of June.

Wiseman organized a couple of well-run meetings in the UK over the last few years. The latest one he's working to mount is a users group meeting without the work, as he said in a brief LinkedIn discussion message. The message provides a chance to point out one of the best-vetted gatherings of 3000 talent and management, the HP 3000 Community.

I created the 3000 group nine years ago and have screened every applicant for membership. You need to have HP 3000 work history in your resume to capture a spot in this group. As the years have worn down the mailing list for 3000 users on 3000-L, this LinkedIn group now has a greater membership in numbers.

LinkedIn is now a part of the Microsoft empire, a $26 billion acquisition. That's good news for Microsoft customers whether you use Windows or something as explicit as the lightweight ECTL tool for SQL Server, SSIS. The latter is being used by The Support Group on a migration of a MANMAN site to the new Kenandy ERP package.

Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn who ran a social networking site while Mark Zuckerberg was still in middle school, is now on the LinkedIn board of directors. The pedigree of LinkedIn flows toward services as well. The highly regarded training site Lynda.com is now a part of LinkedIn. There's a Premium membership to LinkedIn, priced as low at $29.99 a month, that includes access to every course on Lynda. You'll be staggered to see how much business, design, development, and technical training is available through the same network that hosts the only HP 3000 online community.

Job searches are complex and a trying experience for many HP 3000 tech pros. LinkedIn makes it easier. If nothing else, a good-looking resume complete with video, audio and work portfolio examples is part of being a LinkedIn member. Applying for a job is easier in many places by pointing to your LinkedIn resume.

April 14, 2017

The way to San Jose offers 6-figure 3000 job

Developer posts in the HP 3000 world don't come up often, but companies and organizations need talent. On GovernmentJobs.com, a position is open that has a starting salary of $108,802. For the right professional, the pay could go as high as $132,254.

Seeking a COBOL/HP3000 developer who will be responsible for maintaining the AIMS application which runs on a HP3000 system and support the HP3000 system administration work with other team members. The AIMS application is the main appraisal and assessment application for the Assessor's Office. In addition, the selected candidate will help in the AIMS replacement project, which entails rewriting the legacy AIMS application to run in modern platform.

The software is probably the venerable AIM/3000, a financials package that was shiny and new in 1983. The job is at the County of Santa Clara, a shop where just two years ago the organization was looking for help to rewrite AIMS into an application "running on a modern platform." The listing for this year's job reiterates that movement off MPE/iX systems. This time out, the position is being listed as Information Systems Manager I.

The successful candidate should have experience with program development work in COBOL on HP3000 as well as HP3000 system administration experience. The candidate must have the knowledge and experience performing duties listed below.

Maintaining the software application running on HP 3000 system.

Supporting the HP 3000 system administration work with other team members

Program development work in COBOL on HP 3000

HP 3000 system administration work such as batch job scheduling, system backup and restore, printer and output management among other system management tasks.

The 2015 listing was seeking an Information Systems Analyst II at a lower pay scale. The new job could well be the manager for the 2015 staffer. The position closes in two weeks, on April 27.